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Perhaps not the move some might have expected initially from Amazon - but the e-commerce giant is making another foray into the travel, tourism and hospitality industry.

Amazon Explore launched this week in a bid to capture an apparent demand in people going virtual to experience tours and activities in destinations.

The platform includes a sizeable range of products ranging from virtual walking tours of cities and visiting landmarks to cooking courses and destination retail trips.

Users can select from three options: learning and creating, local shopping and culture and landmarks.

However, Explore is currently in beta mode and although the platform is open to all, virtual experiences are only available by "invitation only" - meaning users must make a request to the host of each experience.

Each session is estimated to take around 30 to 60 minutes and is handled through the usual Amazon checkout process.

Product is supplied by a range of partners including well-known tour and activity brand, Intrepid Urban Adventures.

The company's virtual tour of Prague will cost $85 for a 60-minute session, for example.

Amazon is also looking for individuals to become suppliers of product in their destinations, essentially becoming two-sided marketplace that it is famed for having in countless other retail verticals.

The company has yet to respond to requests for comment.

The quiet unveiling of Explore comes 15 months after Amazon launched a flight search and booking service for users in India, powered by domestic online travel agency, Cleartrip.

The integration works through the Amazon Pay section in the site, where members can select services ranging from utility bills to gift cards.

Carriers such as AirAsia, IndiGo, Air India and GoAir are shown in the search results.

In June this year Amazon acquired autonomous vehicle technology company Zoox for an undisclosed fee (some reports suggested $1 billion).

The company was six years old at the time of the deal and had created zero-emission, purpose-built vehicles for autonomous ride-hailing.

It is also almost five years to the day since Amazon shut a previous travel-related experiment known as Amazon Destinations.

After dabbling in something called Amazon Local a few years before, Destinations was an effort to sell a broader array of travel services besides hotels: "overnight tours," "guest houses," "cruises," and "airport shuttles."

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Amazon launches virtual tours and activities for destinations | PhocusWire

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Perhaps not the move some might have expected initially from Amazon - but the e-commerce giant is making another foray into the travel, tourism and hospitality industry. Amazon Explore launched this week in a bid to capture an apparent demand in people going virtual to experience tours and activities in destinations.

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Insta-tastic. Sharon McCutcheon

No list of seminal business books would be complete without The Experience Economy, the 1999 bestseller by American academics B Joseph Pine II and James H Gilmore. They argued that the selling of experiences was the fourth great stage in our consumer development after commodities, goods and services.

They explained their idea with the following example:

As a vestige of the agrarian economy, mothers made birthday cakes from scratch, mixing farm commodities (flour, sugar, butter, and eggs) that together cost mere dimes. As the goods-based industrial economy advanced, moms paid a dollar or two to Betty Crocker for pre-mixed ingredients.

Later, when the service economy took hold, busy parents ordered cakes from the bakery or grocery store, which, at US$10 or US$15, cost ten times as much as the packaged ingredients. Now, in the time-starved 1990s, parents neither make the birthday cake nor even throw the party. Instead, they spend US$100 or more to 'outsource' the entire event to Chuck E. Cheese's.

In recent years, everyone from high street shops to tourist trails to luxury spas has sold consumers experiences - stirring our emotions for the highest price possible. But this model has been as badly hit as any sector by the pandemic. Fittingly, the Chuck E. Cheese restaurant chain is one high-profile casualty, blaming the pandemic for entering Chapter 11 bankruptcy over the summer.

It would be easy to think that demand for experiences will simply return next year or the year after, but I'm not convinced. Instead, something slightly different may be emerging.

Are you experienced?

Prior to 2020, the experience economy appeared to be booming. In the US, sales of spectator events, amusement parks, restaurants and travelling grew much faster during the 2010s than those of goods, while the UK was similarly successful in this respect. People spent generously to make memories - witness the recent trend for attending festivals based around favourite TV shows such as Friends.

Millennials seemed to particularly prioritise memorable experiences over buying things, documenting it all via social media. But then, of course, came COVID-19. A July report from PwC found that accommodation and food were the worst hit service sectors in the UK, followed by arts, entertainment and recreation.

Memorable experiences are about triggering sensations. People remember feeling excited by an adrenaline rush, such as riding a rollercoaster. For example, research on theme parks suggests that to be successful, they must heighten the thrill that visitors expect.

Jacob Lund

Equally, experiences rely on being shared with others. Sharing an activity intensifies the experience. Those who take part in cosplay, for example,, where participants put on costumes and act out character parts, enhance their hobby by swapping advice and giving mutual support.

Obviously, pursuing and sharing such encounters has been difficult under COVID-19 restrictions. This has hit the likes of tourism, hospitality, events, higher education, theatres and concerts.

The restrictions will presumably lift at some point, but a deeper underlying challenge for the experience economy is actually not related to the pandemic - although COVID-19 may accelerate the transformation.

To briefly revisit Chuck E. Cheese, its troubles predate COVID-19. Commentators suggested that whilst the brand appealed to children, it was not exciting enough for parents. Yet the entire fast-dining sector has been struggling since 2016, when several chains such as the UK's Ed's Easy Diner entered administration.

Lester Balajadia

Physical retail has also been in long-term decline. Shopping malls and high streets are spaces for staging experiences. The best ones put on a show, bring people together, excite and entertain. Yet people are seemingly less and less interested. Shuttered brands and empty stores are becoming commonplace.

Look at me

A more fundamental change in the economy may be underway. Instead of experiences, value for today's consumers increasingly comes from having an audience: they like to attract attention.

My research on tourists has found that some people go on holiday to be looked at. They will spend significant amounts on travel that helps them gain attention. Wearing over-the-top outfits, for example, they want local people to notice them. Rather than try to blend in, in search of an authentic experience, I found tourists doing their best to stand out.

It may be time to add a new layer to Pine and Gilmore's progression of economic development, in which value is added by facilitating performances. People are now willing to pay for goods, services and experiences that support their gaining of attention.

This follows two decades of reality television, social media, data analytics and microcelebrity. Living under constant observation is the new normal. Becoming an online influencer is the new aspirational. Online likes seem to be addictive and behaviour changing.

It is therefore unsurprising that we will seek out things which support our online performances. Fast-growing sectors provide opportunities for consumers to enhance their appearance, such as tattoo parlours or fitness. Meanwhile, the outlet for all of these performances, social media, grows rapidly.

Just as commodities, goods and services were somewhat pushed aside by the rise of experiences, so too experiences are now being displaced by performances. It doesn't mean the end of the experience economy; more a rebalancing towards supporting the performances that consumers increasingly prioritise.

Mor Shani, CC BY-SA

Etsy may be an example. This digital marketplace has just made it into the S&P 500 stock index. Etsy offers a place to not just purchase crafts, but also to set up shop oneself. Craft, which demonstrates both skill and self-expression, can be a performance. Etsy can help consumers to craft and display who these people are as much as their macramé bracelets.

Pine and Gilmore noted that the transition from selling services to selling experiences would be difficult for established companies to undertake and weather. The transition from selling experiences to supporting performances will be difficult too, particularly thanks to COVID-19. But businesses that find a way to capitalise on this 21st-century shift might emerge more strongly than their rivals.

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The experience economy will not fully recover - consumers will pay to perform in future instead

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No list of seminal business books would be complete without The Experience Economy, the 1999 bestseller by American academics B Joseph Pine II and James H Gilmore. They argued that the selling of experiences was the fourth great stage in our consumer development after commodities, goods and services.

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Live streamed on Earth Day from a wood in East Sussex

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Singing With Nightingales - Earth Day 2020

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Shakespeare on Zoom: how a theatre group in isolation conjured up a Tempest

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While theatres remain closed, the way we watch Shakespeare is changing. When I picture the audiences Shakespeare would have written for, I think of the groundlings in Shakespeare in Love(1998). They stand, arms on the edges of the stage, staring upwards, eyes filled with tears - laughing, clapping, gasping.

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The performing arts is one of the sectors hit hard by COVID-19, with tens of thousands of gigs cancelled across the world.

While pop and electronic music has evolved with online platforms like YouTube as their natural habitat, jazz has remained more strongly tied to live performance, using social media and online videos mainly as publicity rather than as a primary point of dissemination.

South African born vocalist, trumpeteer and musical director Mandisi Dyantyis was perhaps the first to turn to the virtual concert as a substitute for the band's cancelled performance at Cape Town International Jazz Festival. On 26 March, the band livestreamed the set they would have performed at the festival, charging R100 per household to access the gig.

But this was before lockdown, when musicians could still get together to perform in a room with good recording equipment and a stable internet connection. These are technologies musicians don't necessarily have in their homes.

Since the lockdown in South Africa several jazz musicians have begun to harness online platforms in novel ways.

Lockdown performances

Shane Cooper, the bassist and electronic music producer performing under the alias Card on Spokes, initiated the Quarantine Collabs on YouTube.

Thanks to his electronic work, Cooper has an equipped home studio to record, the technical know-how to produce and edit his music and already has a presence on virtual platforms to release his music.

© Chris Vos

For the Quarantine Collabs, which features musicians like Bokani Dyer and dancers he recruited through a call on social media, Cooper asks his collaborators to send him a prompt (such as words, colours, tempo) to which he composes and records a musical response. He sends the music to the collaborator to record their own response in turn, and finally mixes and edits the results into a one-minute video posted on YouTube and Instagram. The Collabs are made possible, in part, by everyday technologies like mobile phones.

Another jazz musician to turn to digital platforms is Nduduzo Makhathini, who has done a virtual album launch of Modes of Communication: Letters from the Underworld, his first record released on the Blue Note label.

For Makhathini, lockdown coincided with an entire roster of events scheduled in Europe and the US to promote the new album. Social media, which was formerly considered "alternative" spaces of dissemination, have now become central. Makhathini's launch harnessed these newly central platforms, and took form as an Instagram real-time video conversation with the British saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings and a Facebook Live broadcast of a performance by Makhathini and his wife, the vocalist Omagugu Makhathini from their home.

© Chris Vos

At one point, more than 100 people joined on Instagram, and Makhathini's Facebook video has clocked more than 7 000 views. Clearly the benefits of going online is the possibility to reach bigger audiences than physical events.

The problem for performing musicians, however, is also pressingly an economic one.

No simple solutions

The solution is not a simple matter of moving activities online. In these days of free online content and minimal royalties paid by music subscription services like Spotify and Apple Music (at least for those who don't hit above 1 million plays), artists mostly use online platforms for publicity rather than as a means of generating an income.

Yet there's a delicate balance between getting the music out there (which risks adding to the expectation that music is free) and placing a value on artistic work.

Lockdown has the potential to dramatically change the jazz landscape, with artists who do not have an online presence disappearing from the map. Now the pressure is on to adapt quickly. Some might turn to online teaching or performing, but need to generate content, learn to film and edit, find dissemination platforms and manage to reach paying patrons first. Some promising opportunities are on the cards, like creating virtual jazz clubs similar to the virtual house parties deejays have been hosting. But these will take time.

More immediately, the best way to support artists is to buy albums digitally. Streaming only pays a few cents per play, but it does help. Create playlists of your favourite independent artists and play them as often as you can - even if you're not actively listening. Listeners pay a fixed subscription regardless of their usage, but artists will receive more royalties. It would simultaneously boost their algorithms, which heightens the artist's visibility in turn.

Makhathini takes heart in Wynton Marsalis's dictum that: "The death of the artist is when he stops creating." Judging by the initiatives of many musicians the past few days, artists are alive and more innovative than before. The concern, however, is how long they will be supported to do creative work.

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How South Africa's jazz musicians are making the digital leap

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The performing arts is one of the sectors hit hard by COVID-19, with tens of thousands of gigs cancelled across the world. While pop and electronic music has evolved with online platforms like YouTube as their natural habitat, jazz has remained more strongly tied to live performance, using social media and online videos mainly as publicity rather than as a primary point of dissemination.