At an exclusive Austrian Alps chalet beloved by European royals, a group of Brussels high rollers and EU tech industry big wigs will gather this week to hit the ski slopes, take in the sauna and talk digital.

To snag an invite to this prized getaway you need to schmooze one man: Günther Oettinger.

Europe’s digital economy and society commissioner has hosted the retreat every year for the past five years. The official title is the Europa Forum Lech, named after the small town where it is held, halfway up the Alps in the Vorarlberg region, and the theme this year is digital transformation.

But the real draw of this event — known to some as “Günther’s mini-Davos” — is the chance to score face time with Oettinger and circulate among his hand-picked guest list of tech executives, political leaders and top EU officials.

“It is a huge opportunity,” said one guest who asked not to be identified because he wanted to be invited back. “Look at the list of people who go, and how hard it is to get there [it’s a five- to six-hour journey from Brussels]. That tells you everything you need to know about the forum.”

This year's guests include telecoms CEOs José María Álvarez-Pallete López (Telefónica), Hannes Ametsreiter (Vodafone Germany) and Gavin Patterson (BT). Also attending: Giuseppe Recchi, Telecom Italia’s executive chairman; Carlo D’Asaro Biondo, Google’s president for strategic relationships for Europe, the Middle East and Africa; Giovanni Buttarelli, the European data privacy supervisor; and Wilhelm Molterer, the managing director of the European Fund for Strategic Investment and his adviser Marcus Schlüchter.

Top level executives are strongly preferred. One large European telecommunications firm was denied an invitation because it could not commit to sending its CEO.

Added to the mix are top staffers from Oettinger’s digital agenda department (DG Connect), the internal market department (DG Grow), transport department (DG Move), and the energy department, the German commissioner’s old stomping-ground.

The Lech gathering allows for more intimate interactions with Oettinger than in Brussels, said one regular attendee.

“For me, being based in Brussels, if I want to see him, I can see him,” he said. “But in Lech, he is around for most of the days. He is on most of the panels. There are opportunities to sit with him. He is not rushing. Mr. Oettinger says what he thinks. He is very direct. He dares to speak frankly, sometimes maybe for Europeans even too frankly.”

Living the high life

Lech is the ski resort of choice for the British and Dutch royal families. Celebrity visitors have included Tom Cruise and Arnold Schwarzenegger. One of the town’s resorts offers its well-heeled guests a ski valet, a bath butler, a reading butler, and a “leisure time consultant.”

Attendees pay for their own transportation and accommodations for the two-day event held at the five-star Hotel Gasthof Post, where rooms cost up to €445 a night. After a hard day of meetings, they can frolic in the outdoor swimming pool, relax in the sauna, and drink hot toddies in the snow.

Lech Mayor Ludwig Muxel’s team organizes the leisure activities.

Around a third of participants will arrive the night before the official program kicks off on April 14.

“We organize a welcome dinner in a typically Austrian restaurant with traditional Austrian food,” said Stefan Jochum, Muxel’s spokesman. “In the last years it was a very successful evening, because it is not a formal dinner, only a nice get-together in a cozy and friendly atmosphere.”

For at least a dozen of last year’s guests, the festivities also included an extra day so they could hit the ski slopes. Oettinger was not among them in 2015, but he is a known fan of the runs.

By all accounts, Oettinger is in his element at the Austrian chalet. He loves a chat and a beer, one former guest said.

“He has a good time. He’s the sort of guy you’d want at your party,” another former guest said.

“There is an easy atmosphere, you got a kind of feeling when you were there that was quite informal, Commissioner Oettinger was informal, in a good way. Most people are regulars,” he said. “It is a secluded spot. The people who come there have their full focus on the meeting. The commissioner is not coming in and out for other meetings,” he added.

Last year, the participants hobnobbed over lunch buffets of steaming bowls of käsknöpfle, Austria’s answer to mac-and-cheese, and desserts including the famous schaumrollen cream sponge rolls. Dinners were traditional Austrian favorites, including wiener tafelspitz (boiled veal fillet) and topfenknödel (a donut with cottage cheese). Bottles of local wine flowed as freely as the conversation. “The food they served was very Austrian, nothing fancy, with local Austrian wine,” said a Commission official who attended last year.

The Commission is expected to pick up the tab for 12 staffers this year. Other EU officials, including the chair of the European Union Agency for Network and Information Security (ENISA), Buttarelli and Molterer, will attend at their departments’ expense.

“The European Commission does not finance the Europa Forum Lech. The local organizers offer the facilities and deal with logistical aspects and costs linked to the forum,” said a Commission spokesperson.

A quarter of this year’s invitees aren’t listed on the EU’s Transparency Register of lobbyists, where commissioners, their cabinets and directors-general have to disclose meetings with lobbyists. Last year, Oettinger did not disclose any meeting at the forum

That’s not strictly against the rules — there’s an exception for social and public events.

“The Lech Forum is composed of sessions with a large group of stakeholders and not of meetings or bilateral encounters, which would need to be registered in the transparency register,” the Commission spokesperson said.

But it’s not exactly in the spirit of things, according to Daniel Freund, head of advocacy with Transparency International.

“Commissioner Oettinger should have disclosed those meetings,” he said. “The European Commission should always err on the side of the transparency.”

So how do you get a golden ticket?

It helps if you have a Y-chromosome: Of the 107 people expected to attend this year, just nine are women.

You don’t need to be inside the Brussels bubble. Several guests last year were virtually unknown in the European capital.

There’s just one other thing.

“It is easier to get on the guest list if you speak German,” said a participant whose company was represented last year and was invited back this year.

Hortense Goulard contributed to this story.

This story has been updated to correct the time element in the first paragraph.