Chief Executive of AFTA, Jayson Westbury has warned IATA agents of changes to come next year with new global financial guidelines to be announced, which he suspects will be unfavourable for the trade.

With only 998 accredited IATA agents in Australia out of 3084 licensed travel businesses, Mr Westbury said the infiltration was not as strong as in the past, and is being consolidated the fastest in the world down under.  Globally there remains about 55,000 IATA agents.

"Globally, most of them are panicked with the consolidation out of the IATA environment," Mr Westbury said, referring to agents purchasing air tickets through third party sources,

"There is a new financial requirement in the marketplace which have knocked a few out of the perch, and with this new risk mitigation they have less people to deal with."

"The global financial guidelines being launched next year, it's not good news, they are going to tighten things up even more, so those continuing to be IATA, it's a personal choice and if you are complying with these financial ideas then good, but there is change in the wind."

"The stature of IATA in Australia has somewhat reduced and as long as we see competition with consolidation, as we see the online aggregators, it'll become a very competitive space and they will see it as an opportunity to seize.  There's loads of opportunity in that space"

"The consolidation options are shrinking in this market, and making us vunerable only because we're in an evolution phase that will evolve as time goes forward."

Mr Westbury also touched on the aspect of growing ancillary costs for airlines and how AFTA plans to tackle the challenge of ensuring agents are being rewarded for ongoing costs following initial payment of services and products.