Amazon Destinations

2015-2015

Launched in April, Amazon's hotel-booking website closed six months later. The booking service focused on 1-3 night 'close-to-home vacations' near Seattle, Los Angeles and New York.

Amazon was expected to be hugely successful in online travel and offer the established major sites some fierce competition. With millions of daily visitors to their site, their advertisement cost are lower than any competitor. Amazon could also cross-sell its products across the different platforms.

Going to Alaska? Many others going there have bought: >insert all kinds of outdoor stuff you don't need<

Industry experts speculate that Amazon discontinued the service because of the very tough competition.

In a 2016 shareholder letter, Jeff Bezos was proud that Amazon is "the best place in the world to fail." Many of Amazon's most successful initiatives started off similarly to this failed travel service, as a small and risky experiments. The one's that don't work are discontinued and the successful experiments are the reason Amazon is so successful.

Additional info:

Forbes - more on Amazon Destinations

Business Insider - Great list of many of Amazon failures