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Amazon just shut down a travel site it launched 6 months ago

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Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos  Michael Seto/Business Insider

Amazon Destinations, a hotel booking site Amazon launched in April, officially shut down on Tuesday. The closure was first spotted by The Seattle Times.

Amazon Destinations offered a service that let users book hotels within their home area, providing "local getaways" for short vacations.

It initially launched in Seattle, New York, and LA, and then expanded to cities like San Francisco and Atlanta.

Its site now seems pretty much shuttered, as it only shows the message, "Effective October 13, 2015, Amazon Destinations stopped selling hotel reservations." The Seattle Times says all existing reservations previously made through the site will still be honored.

This isn't the first Amazon service in the travel industry. Amazon Local offers a Groupon-like flash sales service where customers can find discount hotel or restaurant deals.

Amazon is known for testing products in new areas and quickly shutting them down if they fail to see traction.

It recently stopped the Amazon Webstore business, which let small business owners create their own online stores, and closed its own peer-to-peer payment service called Amazon WebPay last year. 

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Eugene Kim
Eugene is Business Insider’s Chief Tech Correspondent, where he leads coverage of Amazon. His reporting spans the company’s retail and logistics operations to AWS, Alexa, and its internal culture.Previously, he worked at CNBC, Fortune Magazine Korea, and Japan's Yomiuri Shimbun. He holds degrees from NYU and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.In 2022, Eugene reported on internal documents indicating that Amazon allegedly used deceptive tactics to enroll customers in Prime and made cancellation difficult. The Federal Trade Commission sued Amazon the following year, citing his reporting. The case ended in a record $2.5 billion settlement in 2025.His work has received multiple honors, including the SF Press Club’s Bay Area Journalism Award and SPJ NorCal’s Excellence in Journalism Award.Eugene lives in the Bay Area. Contact him via email at ekim@jkmperu.com, or Signal, Telegram, or WhatsApp at 650-942-3061. Use a personal email address, a nonwork WiFi network, and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.