Switzerland's peak weeks: book the right things first.

If your dates overlap WEF, Art Basel, Watches and Wonders, Christmas ski season or the Locarno Film Festival, secure the immovable parts first: your stay, essential transport and the moments you care about most. Leave lunches and flexible afternoons open. During peak weeks, a plan that can move is more useful than a schedule filled from morning to night.

Know when the country changes shape

WEF, January: accommodation and transport around Davos and Klosters come under pressure well ahead of the event. Once your dates are fixed, treat both as one decision. A suitable base with a realistic journey is more valuable than an inferior room chosen only for its postcode.

Watches and Wonders, spring: Geneva becomes heavily focused on the watch industry. If the fair is your reason for travelling, secure your stay and important evenings early. If it is not, another week may give you more choice and a calmer experience.

Art Basel, June: decide whether you need to stay in Basel or simply need easy access to it. Zürich can be an alternative base when the journey suits your plans. The right choice depends on how much time you expect to spend at the fair and where you want your evenings to happen.

Locarno Film Festival, August: staying in Locarno puts you inside the festival, while Ascona or Lugano can give you a different rhythm. Choose according to whether you want the event around you all day or prefer to enter it for selected screenings and evenings.

Use flexibility where it actually helps

For Christmas, New Year and February ski holidays, your chalet or hotel determines everything else. Once it is confirmed, secure the elements with the least flexibility, such as ski school and essential transfers. Restaurants can follow when you know where each day begins and ends.

If your dates can move, look at the weeks around the main peaks rather than automatically choosing the busiest one. A small shift can create more room for the stay, table or experience that matters most to you.

When you contact a venue yourself, be precise: give your date, party size, preferred time and one acceptable alternative. A clear request is easier to answer than a general question about availability.

For hotels, understand the cancellation terms before you confirm. For restaurants, consider a different seating time or format when the venue matters more than the exact hour. Your second-choice format at the right place can be better than your first-choice format somewhere that does not suit you.

Build one real backup, not a list of ten possibilities. It should be somewhere you would genuinely enjoy, with travel time already checked. A backup only works when you can accept it quickly; otherwise it is another decision arriving at the worst moment.

Decide what is worth protecting

Write down the two moments that define your trip. It may be a specific suite, a Saturday dinner or the first ski lesson with your children. Protect those first. Everything else should support them, not compete with them.

You can do all of this yourself. The information is not secret. The difficult part is keeping the calls, release dates, travel times and backup options aligned while availability changes around you.