Casto Travel Rebrands as Casto, an “Anti-BPO” Solution for Travel Agencies

Marc Casto, the former CEO of Casto Travel and SVP at Flight Centre, is bringing two of his companies together under a single brand: Casto.

The rebrand marks a new chapter for a business that’s evolved far beyond its original purpose—and is now positioning itself as a travel industry-first alternative to traditional business process outsourcing (BPO) firms.

Casto combines MVC Solutions, a U.S.-based support and staffing firm for travel businesses, with Casto Travel Philippines. While the name may sound like the former travel agency, that’s not what this business is.

“We’re not a travel agency—we work for travel companies,” Casto said. “This is a company built by people who understand travel, for the people who work in travel.”

The original Casto Travel agency was founded in 1974 by two women in the San Francisco Bay Area—one of them Casto’s mother. In 1996, the family opened a small operation in the Philippines, partly to serve corporate clients, and partly to stay connected to family there. That arm of the business remained in Casto’s hands even after the U.S. agency was sold to Flight Centre in 2019.

During COVID, as demand for staffing surged, Casto leaned in. What started as a support team of 120 grew to 550, all based in the Philippines, providing back-office and frontline services for agencies that needed help answering phones, handling bookings, and offering after-hours support.

Now, Casto says, the goal is to double down on that growth with a name and brand that reflect both the company’s history and its direction. “MVC Solutions didn’t mean anything to most people,” he said. “And ‘Casto Travel Philippines’ made it sound like we were an agency selling travel. We’re not. We’re part of the infrastructure that lets travel businesses run better.”

What Makes Casto Different

Casto is clear that he doesn’t want this company to be lumped in with the rest of the BPO world. “We’re the anti-BPO,” he said. “We’re not a call center. We don’t operate on volume. We don’t rotate employees in and out.”

Instead, Casto Travel provides dedicated, full-time staff—trained on GDS, familiar with the travel industry, and hired to work solely for one client. That model, Casto said, makes a big difference in both performance and retention. “Some of the big BPOs have attrition rates between 40–60%. Ours last year was 8%. That’s unheard of.”

That employee-first approach is a key selling point. “If you’re running an agency, you want to know your support team is stable. You can’t grow if you’re constantly retraining.”

The company supports travel advisors directly, but also works with suppliers, consortia, and even some non-travel clients. Its services range from phone and email support to HR, accounting, and mid-office processing. Casto says there’s growing demand for help with operations—especially as many CRM and accounting tools in the industry still require hands-on work.

A Family Business at Scale

The rebrand also marks something of a homecoming for Casto. After the sale of the original Casto Travel to Flight Centre, he stayed on for a few years to lead leisure programs across the Americas. But now, he’s back to building something on his own terms.

“It feels good to be back in the family business, even if the business looks different now,” he said. “People joke that I named it after myself, and maybe I did—but this was always the name. It just took us a while to get here.”