When you’re a tech bro you get used to making key decisions before breakfast. For one British executive in the industry the dilemma presented to him on an exclusive retreat for billionaires, celebrities and power brokers was this: should he go on the morning run with a famous marathon runner or the cycle ride with a Tour de France winner? In the end it wasn’t too hard a choice. “I hate jogging,” he says.

The summer season of VIP retreats is approaching. The telltale signs will be the flocks of Gulfstream jets heading to private airfields in the Mediterranean or the Rocky Mountains and flotillas of superyachts converging off Sicily or in the Stockholm archipelago.

These events, usually over two or three days, provide a “safe space” where very famous and very rich people feel comfortable that their words, choice of drink or embarrassing pool-party dad-dancing are not going to be reported or splashed across social media. Guest lists stretch to 200 to 300 names or sometimes are much shorter. Discretion is taken for granted.

“Davos is very passé,” the tech executive says of the bloated annual World Economic Forum jamboree in Switzerland. A couple of years ago Elon Musk tweeted that his reason for declining an invitation to Davos “was not because I thought they were engaged in diabolical scheming, but because it sounded boring af lol”. Organisers of the World Economic Forum issued an “I dumped you first” response, insisting that Musk had not been invited.

One of the retreats Musk has attended is Google Camp. Although you would never guess it from its self-consciously understated name, the Camp is one of the fanciest and most exclusive gatherings. There are no sleeping bags or compost toilets at the search giant’s July retreat at the Verdura Resort, a luxury hotel on the Sicilian coast.

Mornings are spent discussing the big issues facing the world, afternoons relaxing or taking archaeological tours, and evenings at the Valley of the Temples, a Unesco world heritage site, where Coldplay’s Chris Martin and Sting have serenaded diners.

In 2019 Prince Harry reportedly gave a barefoot talk about the environment and then, according to later accounts, hitched a lift home on a private jet. Naomi Campbell talked about her friendship with Nelson Mandela and others providing celebrity gloss included Leonardo DiCaprio, Stella McCartney, Harry Styles, Katy Perry, Orlando Bloom and Bradley Cooper. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates were also reported to have been there that year. Google, while aiming to disseminate all the information in the history of the world, makes an exception for its Camp guest list.

The resort, which was created by Rocco Forte and his sister, Olga Polizzi, includes more than a mile of private beach, golf courses, swimming pools and one of Europe’s largest spa complexes.

But the whole of Camp is a colossal ego massage. The resort has a dock from which launches can zip back and forth to the superyachts jostling off shore. “You’ve got to account for transport,” says the tech executive about the location close to deep water. “Someone I know has one of these events on his superyacht. The atmosphere is the same at all of them. The guests want to meet other interesting people. And they want to feel that they’re at an exclusive event.”

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The agenda is “very lightly curated. There will be a sort of fireside chat between two very impressive people who don’t normally do things together. That’s the draw for guests. Because once you’ve built a company, own a superyacht and a plane, you just want experiences. What do you give a plutocrat that they can’t get anywhere else?”

The short answer is time with the A-list film stars and musicians they never had the chance to rub shoulders with during the hard years spent turning their geekery into a fortune. “Building companies requires enormous sacrifices. So being able to go to these very exclusive events feels like a reward. And who doesn’t want late-night drinks with DiCaprio?” the exec says. “There’s an old joke that if you go to these events often enough you would have seen Elton John do nearly as many performances as on his farewell tour.”

An enormous amount of effort goes into making it look like not a lot of effort has gone into creating the ambience. “Organisers want it to feel like you’re going to someone’s house. Everything’s taken care of. There might be a hike organised by Bear Grylls but you don’t have to go on it.”

At The Weekend, a retreat at a hotel in Aspen, Colorado, one of the attractions last year was the chance to go for a cycle with General David Petraeus, the former CIA director. The eclectic group at the invitation-only conference hosted by Ari Emanuel, chief executive of the talent agency Endeavour, included the film director Ron Howard, the model Karlie Kloss and David Solomon, boss of Goldman Sachs.

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At the same event in 2022, according to The Wall Street Journal, Musk had a self-deprecating moment in an onstage conversation with David Rubenstein, co-chairman of the Carlyle Group, in which he said he had been motivated to lose weight after pictures were published of him without his shirt on when he was on a yacht.

At Media Slopes (known to regulars as “Slopes”) at Deer Valley in Park City, Utah, the Barbie star Margot Robbie was interviewed alongside Ynon Kreiz, chief executive of the toy maker Mattel. Aryeh Bourkoff, chairman of LionTree, the bank that runs the retreat, asked the questions.

Brilliant Minds, which was created by the Spotify head Daniel Ek and the Swedish entrepreneur Ash Pournouri, is held in Stockholm. Past guests include Barack Obama, Malala Yousafzai, the film director Darren Aronofsky and Evan Spiegel, co-founder of the tech company Snap.

One of the winter hot tickets is Summit, known as the “Davos for dudes”, in Powder Mountain, a ski resort in Utah, which the conference organisers have now bought and are developing. Bill Clinton and Ted Turner have attended, as has Richard Branson, who has also reportedly invested in the project along with Martin Sorrell, founder of the advertising and PR behemoth WPP.

Closer to home, Founders Forum is the brainchild of Brent Hoberman, the co-founder, with Martha Lane Fox, of lastminute.com. He calls the deals and initiatives that have taken place after meetings at his events “curated serendipity”. One attendee describes last year’s event at Soho Farmhouse in Oxfordshire. “It was quite random and surreal walking into a bell tent to watch one of the talks and seeing a crowd lounging in the easy chairs including Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, Tim Davie, the BBC director-general, Emma Watson, the actress, Dan Carter, the rugby player, Alex Mahon, the Channel 4 boss, Tony Fadell, who created the iPod, various politicians … and Joe Wicks.”

David Rowan, former UK editor-in-chief of Wired, runs Voyagers, which creates retreats for entrepreneurs and founders of health tech and climate tech companies. You need to be invited by an existing member of the “community”. Locations include Iceland and Spain, where participants walk stretches of the Camino de Santiago. “The way you build relationships and connections is shared activities: skiing, hiking, cycling together. It forms a really tight bond among people. And then good stuff happens.” Swimming in hot rivers in Iceland recently “literally melts the ice”, he says. “On that trip, people decided to start a school to teach about climate and started a company together.”

As my anonymous tech exec puts it, these retreats certainly provide an opportunity to build long-term contacts but for some the social possibilities are surprisingly important. “The technology world in particular is classless,” he says. “If you’ve built a well-known company you’re not hoping to join White’s. For some who have become famous it’s quite difficult to know where to let your hair down. These are the places they can do that.”