If it's January, it must be Davos. Once again, this year, as every year, there is only one place to be next week for the movers and shakers of the global elite.

This weekend, the Hermès luggage is being packed; the state-of-the-art laptops are being nestled carefully alongside designer ski gear. From Tuesday, 2,500 of the world's most influential and high-powered figures from 88 countries will make their annual pilgrimage to this remote Swiss ski resort in search of insight, enlightenment - or a really lucrative corporate deal.

Thomas Mann, the great German writer, made the lofty surroundings of Davos's alpine peaks the setting for his novel The Magic Mountain. Today, for the corporate titans and political heavy-hitters who flock here to the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, Davos conjures up a different sort of magical appeal. For five intense days and nights it becomes the pinnacle of global power, prestige, money and, sometimes, celebrity.

For the great and the good, the high and the mighty, who flock here each January in their droves, the forum is the hottest of tickets, offering the opportunity for high-octane networking and high-IQ brainstorming in surroundings of splendid isolation.

There is often much grumbling, amid at least some of the privileged participants. Used, as many are, to pampering in five-star luxury at home, some find it irksome that the huge demand from even richer or more powerful rivals means that often they are forced to “slum it” in a little less sumptuous surroundings. For the wealthiest, they can at least descend on Davos literally, by helicopter, eschewing the charmingly scenic journey to the resort on the single railway line that wends its way up to the mountains from Zurich - and helps to ensure their security from terrorists and protestors.

Whatever the inconveniences, the always starry cast lists of participants at the world's most exclusive talk-fest stand testament to its enduring appeal. For its elite of regulars, the big draw of Davos remains the simplest reason of all: that so many of their ilk are here, too. The forum has its critics, but above all it has critical mass.

The news and punditry from the forum floods out to the world from the gathering's epicentre - a vast, purpose-built and elaborately decked-out Congress Centre, illuminated, the organisers hope, by the star power of the participants themselves as they strive to shed light on the world's burning issues.

The centre even comes complete with its own nuclear bunker - until recent times the cramped and sweltering annual quarters for a frenetic and fractious press pack.

Entry is carefully controlled to preserve the heady atmosphere among the global chatterati. Fame, wealth and status provide the entry tickets, the Swiss Army provides the security.

This year's line-up of delegates confirms the forum's perennial pulling power, studded as it is with an abundance of boardroom sultans, academic luminaries, political icons and crowned heads from Europe and the Middle East, mixed with a more

numerous but still impressive array of officials, pundits and influential backroom boys from every significant sphere of world affairs.

The only dramatic shift is that the forum has retreated from a dalliance with Hollywood superstardom that had seen above-the-title billing at its gatherings of recent years stolen by the likes of Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, Sharon Stone, Richard Gere and Bono.

Having initially wowed even the corporate moguls who cough up millions in backing for most of the forum's activities, the high-wattage Hollywood personalities' appeal began to dim. Davos regulars, and the organisers themselves, seemed to feel that the superstars were eclipsing the agenda and, perhaps, hogging their own annual place in the global limelight. This year Klaus Schwab, the forum's formidable founder, executive chairman and global éminence grise seems to have banished the Hollywood hangers-on from the select Davos circle, returning the event to its bedrock of top leaders from business and government. The glitziest cultural figures gracing the icy pavements of Davos next week appear to be Emma Thompson, the actress, Yo-Yo Ma, the cellist, and Peter Gabriel, the musician. Thus in more sombre times for the world economy, this year the forum itself seems to be sobering up, just a little.

The roll-call of those about to roll-up for the forum next week remains, though, as formidable as ever. The slightly-less-famous flying in to soak up the atmosphere will still be able to savour what aficionados talk of feverishly as “Davos moments” - such as finding themselves sandwiched in the snack bar queue between Bill Gates and Condoleezza Rice. Ms Rice, the US Secretary of State, and Mr Gates are set to take starring roles at this year's meeting, but will find themselves in good company in a daunting line-up of their peers. Among the business leaders, Mr Gates will be able to talk technology with his arch-rivals Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the billionaire founders of Google, while the chief executives and chairmen of the world's most powerful multinationals will be present in force.

Among the world's political figures, Gordon Brown will find himself able to compare notes on holding Britain's premiership with his predecessor: Tony Blair is one of the meetings' co-chairs this year.

In total, 27 heads of state or government and 113 cabinet ministers from around the world are due to take part in the forum's formal discussions and a multitude of private talks.

The priorities among the participants are as diverse as their ranks, with the politicos, media types and academics focusing for the most part on the formal, five-day agenda of 235 sessions spanning topics from resolving Middle East conflict and terrorist threats to the sources of the world's next technological breakthroughs.

Navigating the sweeping agenda is a daunting but stimulating experience, with seminars, debates and presentations that span the profound and the prosaic, the intriguing, the quirky and the frankly scary.

For many of the corporate heavyweights assembled here, however, these ostensible reasons for attending give way, in practice, to wheeling-and-dealing in the resorts' hotels. Deals dreamt up, drafted and drawn up here are often said to emerge only months later to move the world's markets. Thus, the forum's true impact can reverberate long after the delegates have flown home and far beyond the isolated confines of this straggly Alpine town that next week will seize the attention of the world.

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