01/12/21, 16:11 The role of Service Design in Tourism | by Natia Gogotidze | Medium

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The role of Service Design in Tourism

Natia Gogotidze Jul 17, 2020 · 5 min read

Due to Covid-19, our travel bucket lists are temporarily suspended and we are no
longer able to travel around the world easily and become a part of amazing cultural
experiences. This situation was reflected in the countries’ economic situation as well,
especially Georgia’s- where tourism was a rapidly expanding industry with a wide
range of economic benefits. If we take a look on the statistics, tourism revenues to GDP
was 19.9% in 2018, whereas it was 4.4% in 2009.

Tourism is actively supported by the Georgian government and it is currently carrying

out a 10-year plan until 2025, with the goals of raising awareness about Georgia on the
international market and supporting sustainable tourism development. The number of

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international non-resident visitors was 7.8% higher in 2019 compared to 2018.

However, the visiting dynamics is not evenly distributed and the summer season is still
a peak in terms of the number of tourists and Georgia is lacking visitors in other
seasons as well. For instance, In August, we get more than double the number of
tourists compared to January.

That said, we need a new approach to develop Georgia into a new, cultural tourism
destination through Design Thinking.

There is no single interpretation of Design Thinking. It is a human centered, creative

problem solving methodology. Design thinking is all about understanding the user and
coming up with various, creative alternatives to solve their problems.

How can we utilize Design Thinking in the tourism industry?

Customers are changing over time and they are looking for meaningful experiences
and not just regular services. Due to digitalization, customers have choices from all
over the world so just standard offerings are not enough.

Tourism is a human centered activity, which should be built around empathy, response
to customer expectations, professionalism, creativity and trust. These days, consumers
undoubtedly desire experiences, and more and more businesses are responding by
explicitly designing and promoting them. Because of that, the people involved in the
tourism industry should think about creating memorable experiences that last a
lifetime.

In order to understand more about Design Thinking and connect them with the
Tourism Industry, let’s take a look at the main philosophy on which Design Thinking
stands for.

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5 core Principles of Service Design Thinking

Design Thinking is user centered- services are created for customers, therefore service
providers should keep customers at the heart of the process. They should gather not
only simple statistical data (gender, ethnicity, age and etc.), but insights around wants
and needs. (what they dream of, where they work, what do their friends say and do,
how they spend their time, which social media they use, how they communicate and
etc.). We should deep down all the details to learn and design tourism services for
them.

Service Design is co-creative, which means that besides users and customers, other
stakeholders should also be involved in the design process such as back office
employees, managers and also non-human interfaces. Usually, there are a lot of people
involved in providing the service, thus we should listen to everyone starting from the
chef of the restaurant to the security of the hotel or the neighbor that lives next to the
guest house you own.

it’s important to remember that services are not static and they are sequencing. With
the help of design thinking we can create a Customer Journey Map and plan “before
the trip experience” “during the trip experience” and “after the trip experience.” With
these in mind, we can make sure that our customer has a full satisfaction to every
interaction with our service, for example our company is easily searchable, booking
process is flawless, offerings are described in details, pictures are relevant and trustful,
whole stay is taken in mind.

It is crucial to make services tangible and memorable for the customers. Physical
evidence enhances customer experience, triggers positive emotions and extends the
post service experience period. In this case, we can make special souvenirs, send a
thank you note, suggest special offers and so on. These kinds of activities make
customers more loyal and are eager to recommend it to others as well.

Last but not least, all of these processes are holistic and interconnected to each other.
They all thrive for one goal. Service designers should look at the broad image, take in
mind the whole environment a service takes place at, consider every single aspect of a
service and alternative sequences that may happen.

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Examples of Service Design in Tourism Industry

Airports and Airlines

Many international organizations have transformed their services through Design

Thinking. For example, Heathrow Airport used Design Thinking to provide
information in a more efficient and pleasant way. Virgin Atlantic Airlines redesigned
the whole customer process in order to match pre, post flight and in flight experience.
They used customer journey maps and other tools and by the statistics of Virgin, the
new design had a 75% decrease in check in times and a 30% increase in Customer
Service Index.

Visitors Centers and Direct Marketing Organizations

In Saint Paul, Minnesota, the Visitors Center was losing relevance because of the
Internet evolution. Through the Design Thinking process, they revamped the ‘Visitor
Center Experience’. Coming from the customer needs, they discovered that mobile
visitor centers would be more effective and as they say it has been a huge success and
people are actively using it.

Hotels

Using this approach, hotels from around the world have designed new experiences as
well. For instance, in one hotel, after observation of customers’ behavior, they changed
the lobby experience and created a more immersive and personal check in, where both
parties could see the check in screen and verify the information easily and
transparently. Moreover, Hyatt now has 9 prototype hotels around the world, with the

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purpose to try out new ideas with customers, get feedback and iteratively improve until
it becomes a standard for their hotels.

Online marketplace

Airbnb is another good example. In 2009, Airbnb was almost crashing and was on the
verge of bankruptcy. Soon, the founders of the company examined and found out that
the problem was the low-quality pictures that were posted by the hosts. They rented a
camera, visited hosts and enhanced the quality of the pictures (felt in the shoes of the
customer) and in a week Airbnb’s revenue started to increase and today it is one of the
most successful and innovative companies.

To sum up, Service design is an interdisciplinary approach for improving and

innovating customer services specifically. Considering that Tourism is a service, we can
connect these two disciplines together and constantly create behind the rope
experiences.

Tourism Georgia Service Design Design Thinking

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