Travelport Asia appointed Mr. Marla Veerabhadra Shastry, as Head of Market Development, South Asia. Based in New Delhi, India, Shastry joins Travelport with over 26 years of experience in profit centre operations, business development, operations management and client servicing in the travel and tourism industry.

In his new role, Shastry will have broad business development responsibilities for India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Bhutan. In addition, he will serve as a member of a small, elite group of Travelport executives nicknamed the ‘Rainmakers’, a newly created cross-functional team with broad business development responsibilities, and will report to Marco Gorin, Travelport’s Market Development Director in Asia.

As a member of this elite team, Shastry will help augment Travelport’s leadership position in the travel industry in South Asia, by creating significant leverage for South Asian customers through the company’s GDS platform, Galileo by Travelport, and powerful synergies with other relevant Travelport business units and products.

Said Travelport’s Gorin, “We carefully recruited M.V. Shastry as a member of the Travelport ‘Rainmakers’ to help create new opportunities for Galileo customers throughout South Asia to take advantage of the competitive position Travelport has with its ability to manage changes in the traditional GDS business model while ensuring the relevance of traditional players like travel agencies.”

“As agents face today’s high pressure competitive business environment, Shastry’s role in the South Asia region will be to assist them in developing and improving the way they do business with out-of-the-box solutions,” added Gorin.

Prior to joining Travelport in October 2006, Shastry served as Business Head, Carlson Wagonlit Travel – North India. Before that, he was employed with International Travel House, a well-known Travel Enterprises in India and Jet Airways. Shastry earned a Bachelor’s degree in Commerce from Andhra University and is pursuing a Certificate Course for Chartered Financial Analysts.