The experience economy myth
For a decade we were told the future of fun was immersive: VR lounges, escape rooms, silent discos. South Africa was supposed to swap nights out for "experiences". Then the data came in — and the country voted overwhelmingly for the pub.
The 60-second version
- 🍺 The pub won. "Pub near me" +91%, "shisanyama near me" +99%, "wine bar near me" +109%, "cocktail bar near me" +64%.
- 🎮 The hype lost. VR parties −26%, silent disco −31%, gaming tournaments −37%, paintball −35%.
- 🪓 One immersive winner: axe throwing (+148%) — cheap, social and gloriously analogue.
- 💡 The pattern: South Africans bought cheap, social, walk-in fun — not expensive, ticketed, tech-driven "experiences".
Every trend deck of the last decade promised the same future: consumers would stop buying things and start buying experiences — and the experiences would be immersive, curated and high-tech. Escape rooms. VR arcades. Silent discos. Paint-and-sip. The night out, we were told, was dying and being replaced by something more interactive.
Half of that is true. South Africans absolutely shifted toward experiences. But they did not pick the experiences the consultants predicted. Given four years and a free choice, the country reached past the VR headset and ordered another round at the pub.
What actually won
The great return to the bar
The single clearest growth story in nightlife isn't novel at all. It's the neighbourhood venue — the pub, the shisanyama, the wine bar, the rooftop — surging back as load-shedding ended and South Africans went looking for somewhere, anywhere, to be together.1
Four-year change in "near me" venue and experience demand.
The takeaway: Cheap, social, walk-in venues dominate. Wine bars (+109%), shisanyamas (+99%) and pubs (+91%) lead the chart.
These aren't "experiences" in the brochure sense — they're places to drink and talk. The thing that grew is the oldest format there is: somewhere to gather.
Monthly search demand for axe throwing, with trend line.
The takeaway: Up +148% — the one "experience" that genuinely broke out. And it's about as low-tech as a Saturday gets.
Axe throwing succeeded for the same reasons the pub did: it's cheap, social, walk-in and analogue. The lesson isn't "no experiences" — it's "the right kind".
What actually lost
The immersive future that never arrived
Now the uncomfortable half. The categories that were supposed to define modern fun mostly went backwards. The more expensive, more technological and more "curated" the experience, the worse it did.
Four-year change for the much-predicted "immersive" experiences.
The takeaway: Gaming tournaments (−37%), silent disco (−31%), VR parties (−26%) and paintball (−35%) all fell.
Even escape rooms — the poster child of the experience economy — barely grew. The immersive future was real overseas hype, but South African wallets and weekends went elsewhere.
Put the two baskets head to head and the "experience economy" story inverts: the cheap-and-social line climbs steadily while the hyped-and-immersive line drifts sideways and down.
Combined demand for neighbourhood venues vs combined demand for immersive experiences.
The takeaway: It's not close. The pub-and-shisanyama basket pulls clear away from the VR-and-silent-disco basket.
This is the chart that should be on every nightlife investor's wall. The South African experience economy is real — it just runs on liquor licences and plastic chairs, not headsets and wristbands.
Relative search volume across neighbourhood drinking, tactile thrills and the cooling hype.
The takeaway: The neighbourhood-drinking block dwarfs everything else; tactile thrills are a healthy second; the hyped block is small and shrinking.
If you map the market by interest rather than by buzz, the picture is almost the opposite of the trend forecasts.
| The prediction | The reality (4-yr change) |
|---|---|
| VR lounges are the future | VR parties −26% |
| Silent discos replace clubs | Silent disco −31% |
| Gaming is the new going out | Gaming tournaments −37% |
| Escape rooms everywhere | Escape rooms +9% (flat) |
| The pub is dying | Pub near me +91% 🍺 |
The verdict
South Africans chose the cheap seats — and they were right
The experience economy did arrive in South Africa. It just turned out to be deeply, stubbornly social and unglamorous: a country that, the moment the lights stayed on, wanted a cold drink, a warm crowd and a place to put both. The future of fun wasn't a headset. It was a bar stool — and four years of data say we never really wanted anything else.
They promised us the metaverse. We asked for the smoking section.
- Source. Aggregated South African search demand for nightlife, venue and experience keywords, monthly, June 2022 – May 2026.
- Growth. First 12 months vs the most recent 12.
- Caveat. Some immersive experiences (escape rooms) remain large in absolute volume even while flat. Search is intent, not footfall.
References & further reading
Demand figures are PartyTrends' own analysis of the search-demand dataset described above. Sources below corroborate the wider context.
- Daily Maverick, Eskom marks 300 days without load shedding (Jan 2025) — the lights-back-on backdrop to the going-out recovery. dailymaverick.co.za
- FTI Consulting, Out of the Darkness: Economic Costs of Load-Shedding — load-shedding days by year. fticonsulting.com
- PartyTrends, The Battle of the Provinces — the neighbourhood-venue boom by province. partytrends.co.za/blog
- Statistics South Africa, Census 2022 — population context. statssa.gov.za
- PartyTrends, Party & Event Stats & Methodology. partytrends.co.za/stats