If you are a travel agency you are well familiar with some of the problems that can occur by not having IATA accreditation. The International Air Transport Association is a powerful group that until fairly recently has had major control over the travel industry since they are the gatekeepers for a travel agency or travel agent to issue tickets. If you are non-IATA, it can be incredibly difficult to do your work as a travel agent as you are not able to issue any of the tickets yourself.

Part of the reason why many individuals do not want to go through the IATA anymore is because of the time and cost involved. Getting your IATA accreditation for your travel agency can be incredibly time-consuming and costly. If you need to certify multiple agents, this cost only increases. Because of the difficulty involved as well as the cost involved, many in the travel industry are looking for ways that they can still serve their clients even if they are non-IATA certified.

To that end, new businesses and new opportunities are springing up to help meet this need. One of the best is the new consolidation businesses, also known as hosting agencies, where they can help work on behalf of travel agencies and a travel agent who does not have accreditation to still allow them easy ticket purchase access. So if you work in the travel industry or are interested in finding ways to save your travel agency money, what can you do if you don’t have easy access to the global distribution system and are not accredited by the International Air Transport Association?

Consolidation Business

The consolidation business operates as a middleman between the travel agency and the travel industry, accessing the global distribution systems network and can thus issue tickets on behalf of a travel agency.

Even if you don’t have an IATA accreditation, you can work under the umbrella of an IATA-certified agency with solutions like TTS Consolidator that can help you do what you previously couldn’t. By using TTS Consolidator you get the ticket autonomy you need allowing you to compete in the same league as any IATA agency.

This is crucial as a travel agency that cannot issue their tickets is at a disadvantage when it comes to being able to negotiate prices and getting their customers the best deals, as the speed of and access to the global distribution system (GDS) is an important access point for a successful travel agency to have. However, with new solutions to mitigate this handicap like TTS Consolidator and other consolidation tools you can bypass the IATA and skip having the IATA accreditation.

There are several benefits to using a third-party business as opposed to pursuing your IATA accreditation yourself. One of the biggest, of course, is cost. The training by the International Air Transport Association can be quite costly for a small business. Then, of course, there is the time that it takes to get the training done. Between the two of these then it is little wonder that many individuals are pursuing these popular third-party options to help give them the freedom they need to operate their business expeditiously, as well as economically.

Benefits of Third-party IATA Accreditation

One of the other major benefits, in addition to the time and money saved by your business by not having to become certified, is that the consolidation solutions like TTS Consolidator which operate as middlemen use impressive systems which can allow you to get tickets issued nearly instantaneously. By operating as a middleman, they indirectly give you access to the global distribution system and you can use their accreditation to be able to get tickets booked quickly.

This ability to book tickets swiftly without the need to be certified yourself negates one of the primary reasons why individuals get IATA certified in the first place. The marginal cost difference between being IATA accredited yourself and using a middleman would take years or sometimes decades to pay off by a small travel agency. Using a third-party carrier then is a great way of saving your business time and money as you can continue working even if you are non-IATA.

Another one of the major benefits provided by TTS Consolidator is 24-hour access. TTS Consolidator can give you easy worldwide access to the GDS meaning that even without your IATA accreditation you can still get tickets issued at any time and do not have to wait for some arbitrary business hours. Having this freedom to be able to issue tickets at any time of the day or night means that a travel agency will easily be able to meet the needs of their clients even in cases of emergencies. Having a client in distress and having no ability to book flights on their behalf or assist them more directly can be a major hindrance to your growth and a hit to your reputation. However, by using TTS Consolidator or another consolidation tool you can still get access to the GDS network at any time of the day or night and thus be able to help meet the needs of your clients wherever they are in the world whenever they need the help.

And even if you don’t have a GDS or if you don’t have a Travelport GDS – Apollo, Galileo, or Worldspan – you can still be in this IATA league competition. Do you want to know how? Just contact our sales team to know which of our consolidators/host agencies operate in your market or use one of our top global consolidators – Magnet. You will be able to access a web-based flight search platform and manage your bookings and issue your customers’ tickets online any time you choose.

Closing

In closing, it is little wonder that with such advancements in the travel industry such as the consolidation business many travel agencies are seeing less of a need for IATA accreditation. With a hosting agency to assist, it is far easier to simply have a third party take the monetary hit on your behalf while still simultaneously not forbidding you access to the global distribution system or from getting tickets issued quickly through companies that are certified with IATA. This ability to save time on the training and money on the accreditation allows for small and mid-sized travel agencies to have greater freedom than ever before to serve their clients. With convenient access 24/7 with TTS Consolidator, it is little surprise that being non-IATA is no longer a major roadblock to the growth of your thriving travel agency.