IATA accreditation or a TIDS code for a travel agency
Whether a travel agency should apply for full IATA accreditation or a TIDS code, and how buying and paying for airline tickets changes with each.
By Achekam · · 4 min read · For Travel businesses in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya
A growing agency in Nairobi, Lagos or Johannesburg reaches a point where buying every air ticket through someone else starts to chafe. The consolidator's mark-up eats into margins, ticketing waits on another company's office hours, and corporate clients ask whether you are "IATA". The obvious next step seems to be applying for IATA accreditation. For many agencies it is; for others, a lighter option does the job.
IATA offers both. Full accreditation changes how an agency issues and pays for tickets. A TIDS code gives an agency an identity the industry recognises, without that change. This article explains what each one gives, what comes with accreditation, and how an agency that buys through a consolidator should record its tickets either way.
What full accreditation gives an agency
IATA says that gaining its travel agent accreditation simplifies an agency's business relationship with all participating airlines in its market, from sale to settlement. Instead of separate arrangements with each airline, or buying through an intermediary, the agency deals with the airlines through IATA's standard framework.
IATA says it offers three levels of accreditation and that the process takes 25 days. Which level suits you depends on how you operate, and the details are on IATA's own Travel Agency Program page, which describes the accreditation options and the TIDS code side by side. Read it before you apply, because that is where IATA sets out what each level requires.
A TIDS code: recognition without full accreditation
Not every agency needs, or can yet meet the requirements for, full accreditation. For agencies that only want to be recognised digitally by industry partners, IATA offers an IATA code under its Travel Industry Designator Service, known as TIDS. IATA describes it as identification recognised industry-wide, without full accreditation.
A TIDS code suits an agency that:
- sells mainly hotels, tours and packages, with air as a smaller part of the business;
- wants a recognised identifier for dealing with suppliers, booking platforms and partners;
- is happy to keep buying air tickets through a consolidator for now.
What a TIDS code does not do is put the agency into IATA's settlement system for airline tickets. That remains with full accreditation.
The tools and rules that come with accreditation
IATA's travel agency services include Timatic for Booking, which gives agents the latest travel documentation and entry requirement information, and the IATA Passenger Agency Conference Resolutions Manual, which IATA describes as the regulatory framework for agents.
Both matter in daily practice. Timatic answers the question every traveller asks at the worst moment: do I need a visa, and is my passport valid long enough? The Resolutions Manual sets out the rules an agency with accreditation works under, from how tickets are issued to how money is remitted. An agency that applies should read the parts of the Manual that apply to its market before it starts, not after its first query from IATA.
Settlement: who can use BSP
The biggest practical change is how tickets are paid for. IATA's Billing and Settlement Plan, the BSP, is a standardised global framework that simplifies sales reporting, remittance and settlement between airlines and travel agents, and IATA says only agents holding IATA accreditation can access it.
So the choice comes down to this:
| Full accreditation | TIDS code | |
|---|---|---|
| Recognised identifier in the industry | Yes | Yes |
| Access to BSP for ticket settlement | Yes | No |
| Issues airline tickets through BSP | Yes | No |
| Works under the Resolutions Manual | Yes | Check IATA's terms for TIDS |
In practice, an agency without BSP access buys air tickets through a consolidator or another agency that has it, and pays that supplier rather than settling with the airlines. How a BSP agency reconciles its reports and remittances once it is in is covered in reconciling BSP reports, remittances and memos.
Recording consolidator tickets in the books
Until an agency settles through BSP, every air ticket is a purchase from a supplier. In Achekam, a business keeps one supplier list with duplicate checks by name or VAT number, and quotations, orders and bills pick suppliers from it. Set each consolidator up once on that list.
Each ticket, or each consolidator statement, is then recorded as a supplier bill. Supplier bills are recorded line by line with VAT; a bill without a purchase order waits for approval before it posts, and it can be paid in full or in parts from a chosen bank account. Put the ticket number and traveller's name on each line, so a later refund or change can be traced back to the original purchase.
On the sales side, the ticket goes on the traveller's invoice. A business creates customer invoices as drafts it can change or delete, and issuing one takes the next number in the sequence and posts it to the ledger as debtors, sales and output VAT. Show your own service fee as a separate line from the fare, so the traveller sees both and your books can tell them apart.
One limit to plan for: all invoice revenue in Achekam posts to a single sales account, and an invoice line cannot name another one. If your accountant treats fares as money collected for the airline rather than as your own sales, the fare part has to be moved out of sales with a journal. Keeping supplier money apart from your commission explains that set-up, and commission owed by suppliers covers the commission side.
Deciding which route fits
Look at last year's sales. If air tickets were a large and growing share, and the consolidator's mark-up and delays are costing you clients, full accreditation is worth the application. If air was occasional and most of your margin came from packages and hotels, a TIDS code may give you the recognition you need while you keep buying air through a partner.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
