More evidence that there is a concerted effort to bring travel agencies closer to the things people do once they're in a destination.
Two of the main global distribution systems have signed agreements with third party intermediaries in a bid to cross-sell tours and activities into the booking path and subsequent personal management of a customer's trip once they are on-the-road.
First up is Amadeus which has put Viator products onto its CheckMyTrip mobile application.
The app is used primarily as service pushed by agents to give travellers information about their trips after they've made a booking.
This normally includes real-time reservation details, weather forecasts, event guides, currency information and other destination content.
It will now feature a search tool so users can find Viator's tours and activities and make a booking direct within the application.
The service is due to be announced this week by Amadeus and Viator.
Michael Baybe, head of mobile at Amadeus, says:
"Today we know that the majority of destination content, such as tours, are booked once the traveller is at their destination.
"Partnering with Viator, our users receive contextualised tours and activity recommendations according to their location."
Amadeus says the Viator agreement, after the initial roll-out to the app, is likely to be extended to agency desktops through the existing search and booking tools they use.
Meanwhile, Travelport has looked again at the opportunity to give travellers the chance search and book tours and activities earlier in the process.
Earlier this month it partnered with Ingresso Entertainment Tickets so that travel agencies can secure attractions, theatre tickets and other destination sightseeing products from their existing agency desktop platform.
Ingresso (which calls itself as a "global distribution system for tickets") will provide a plug-in to the Smartpoint agency desktop so users can set their own pricing and commission levels on products and issue email confirmations for tickets.
Purchases are also integrated into a customer's existing Passenger Name Record for the rest of their booking.
It is not the first time Travelport has partnered with third parties to provide access to tours and activities for agents.
In November 2012 it worked with Flextrip (now owned by Nor1) and AdventureLink to allow users of its Rooms & More platform to secure tickets for attractions and tours.
Both services are now no longer available on Rooms & More.
NB:Grand Canyon tour image via Shutterstock.