Getting to know – Worldspan

IAPCO chats to Jason Wilcock, Chairman and Commercial Director, Worldspan, UK

www.worldspan.co.uk

1972. We celebrate 50 continuous years in business next year. My father founded the business. Worldspan was a travel management business, setting up and organising travel and tours for wealthy individuals and groups when long haul travel was only for a privileged few. My grandfather had a car dealership – Honda – and gave us our first piece of corporate incentive business. From there we developed our corporate incentive and then events business. We took our first group of doctors to congress on behalf of a corporate client and so began our journey to becoming a full-fledged PCO. And in 2015 I bought the business through a family buyout.

Originally from Liverpool, the family relocated to North Wales. My grandmother was unwell and the sea air was recommended. We set up an office there and have since moved to our own purpose-built office building overlooking the sea. We now service global business from our operational base in the town of Abergele and, from there, we travel the World !

We have offices in Liverpool, Manchester, London, and we have just opened in Dublin. We have a core team of 30 employees who have stayed with us through this pandemic year and we are ready to recruit again.

Worldspan has a world-leading digital design and development team in-house. The team works for a number of globally-recognised brands but also, of course, for our own teams and their clients. Having this digital discipline and skill set in-house makes us all digital savvy and is the reason that we were able to develop our own proprietary virtual platform – Virt-US Live – this year. And, of course, Worldspan works for both corporate and association clients and that brings benefit to both.

Of course, it is unrecognisable from when we started to trade but we have seen more change in the last 18 months than the last 18 years. COVID-19 has been a catalyst for rapid change. But there are constants. Agencies remain custodians of the brand and brand experience. The user experience – the delegate or member journey through congress – has always been our responsibility. Logistics is one of the skills we need to deliver but we need many more. The professional PCO is multi-skilled with depth of knowledge across many disciplines – finance, marketing, sales and more.

It is fluid. It will remain fluid. Clients are keen to get back to live events but are realistic about how that can happen. We’ve seen a growing understanding of the complexities and costs of hosting virtual, hybrid and streamed conference and congress. But we see a drive to digital delivery that will continue.

What we do, as a PCO, is very niche. IAPCO defines, describes and drives our professional make-up and characteristics. IAPCO decides what is good, what is best and what is world-leading. Being part of a professional community helps all of us to stay on top of our game !