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A nightclub virtual experience with conspicuous leisure value

In my April 3rd blog, The impact of virtual entertainment experiences during the lockdown on the location-based entertainment landscape, I discussed how during the pandemic when people can no longer post shareworthy out-of-home experiences on social media, they still have the evolutionary programmed need to get status fixes and build social capital. I questioned whether we will see the development of virtual experiences that people will value and share as much as real world ones? Will quarantined people start posting screen-capture photos of ‘must-attend’ streaming events that are shareworthy enough to build their social currency and create FOMO? Will these become new habits rather than temporary pandemic replacements? Is it possible that post-crisis we may no longer have as great a need to meet up out-of-home for communal entertainment and leisure experiences if we have learned that we can get the same feeling of togetherness and develop social capital with virtual experiences?

As I described in that blog, virtual experiences are readily available to everyone, so they lack the exclusivity and uniqueness that is required to create conspicuous leisure value. To truly have shareworthy conspicuous value, they will have to be offered as one-time events to a limited audience, perhaps through limited sale of virtual tickets.

Now we have one example of a virtual event that has the possibility of meeting those requirements, Club Quarantee, an online nightclub that hosts parties on Zoom. It has all the trappings of an uber-exclusive New York nightclub including a doorman who checks that you’ve paid the $10 cover charge. You can pay an extra $80 to get a private virtual table, a private video room where a small group of people can listen to the DJ or watch performances separate from the rest of the crowd. The online club even request attendees wear nightclub attire.

Three hundred people attended the first dance party last week. Club Quarantee’s next event will take place this Saturday. It is limited to 50 virtual tables and a total of 1,000 attendees. 

The limited attendance and admission charge definitely give Club Quarantee many of the characteristics of an experience, virtual in this case, that has conspicuous leisure value. Will we see the evolution of other virtual leisure experiences with heightened conspicuous value?  Only time will tell whether virtual clubbing like this and other virtual experiences will be the new competition and take market share from out-of-home leisure experiences when we can again visit them. 

About Randy White

Randy White is CEO and co-founder of the White Hutchinson Leisure & Learning Group. The 31-year-old company, with offices in Kansas City, Missouri, has worked for over 600 clients in 37 countries throughout the world. Projects the company has designed and produced have won seventeen 1st place awards. Randy is considered to be one of the world's foremost authorities on feasibility, brand development, design and production of leisure experience destinations including entertainment, eatertainment, edutainment, agritainment/agritourism, play and leisure facilities.

Randy was featured on the Food Network's Unwrapped television show as an eatertainment expert, quoted as an entertainment/edutainment center expert in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, New York Times and Time magazine and received recognition for family-friendly designs by Pizza Today magazine. One of the company's projects was featured as an example of an edutainment project in the book The Experience Economy. Numerous national newspapers have interviewed him as an expert on shopping center and mall entertainment and retail-tainment.

Randy is a graduate of New York University. Prior to repositioning the company in 1989 to work exclusively in the leisure and learning industry, White Hutchinson was active in the retail/commercial real estate industry as a real estate consultancy specializing in workouts/turnarounds of commercial projects. In the late 1960s to early 1980s, Randy managed a diversified real estate development company that developed, owned and managed over 2.0 million square feet of shopping centers and mixed-use projects and 2,000 acres of residential subdivisions. Randy has held the designations of CSM (Certified Shopping Center Manager) and Certified Retail Property Executive (CRX) from the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC).

He has authored over 150 articles that have been published in over 40 leading entertainment/leisure and early childhood education industry magazines and journals and has been a featured speaker and keynoter at over 40 different conventions and trade groups.

Randy is the editor of his company's Leisure eNewsletter, has a blog and posts on Twitter and Linkedin.

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