Amazon has announced Explore, a new platform to let you enjoy exploring places, classes, or other experiences right from the comfort of your home. This is similar to Airbnb Experiences that lets you do virtual tours or be at a cooking class virtually from your desktop. These new services have been started during the COVID-19 pandemic era so that you can enjoy several experiences right from your home only.

At Amazon Explore, customers can book live and virtual experiences led by local experts. You can do personal shopping, discover new places, and learn new things right from your computer. You can connect one-on-one with the hosts that are participating in this new service, ask them questions, investigate new locales, and more.

You will require a laptop or desktop computer and Amazon clearly mentions that Explore does not work on a phone or tablet. You will require an up-to-date browser – Chrome, Safari, Edge, Firefox browser. A microphone or microphone-enabled device (the one on your computer will work), headphones or speakers, high-speed internet of 5mbps, or better.

You just have to choose your virtual experience. You can choose whether you want to learn something this weekend or want to visit a place virtually from your personal tour guide. Find from Amazon Explore and book your session right away. According to Amazon, most experiences are 30-60 minutes long. Just pick a time of day when you can go along virtually with your local guide and enjoy it. You can cancel or reschedule up to 24 hours before the session begins. And when the time of your session comes, simply sign in to your Amazon account and click into Your Session page from Your Orders. Your host will connect you from there.

One-way video means you do not have to be on camera and Amazon highlights as one of the special features of Explore service. You can view the host on the screen but does not require to be on the camera. You can ask any questions or discuss things with audio-only.

Amazon Explore allows hosts to do live-streaming on location in real-time, giving the customer a personal tour virtually so that they could feel and live in that moment. Amazon says in many experiences, you can purchase items you find along the way as well, thus enjoying a special shopping experience which is just for you.

You can learn new skills, visit famous landmarks and places where only locals are allowed to go. Every host must have pre-set packages for their customers but you can always customize them.

You can explore different Amazon Explore sessions by categories, or by region. The sessions start from $10 and can go up to a good amount, depending upon what you choose, for instance, the highest fee for experience is $210 (at least in the featured section) that lets you virtually visit Virtually tour Prague’s Old Town. According to Techcrunch, there are a total of 86 experiences across 16 countries.