Abstract
Previously, both practitioners and academia used the product concept in tourism field. However, tourism was a complex experience which has intangibility, perishability, heterogeneity and other characteristics. As such, service concept was more suitable than product to design the travel itinerary. This research proposed and applied service design for redesigning the package tour; Malaysian Chinese were the target of this study. This research was structured as the following. First, tourist behavior research was conducted through participant observation and interviews with tour guides. Second, a co-creation workshop was conducted for data analysis and idea generation among multidisciplinary members; persona were created then to portray target groups, arrange their needs to define value proposition, and generate the creative ideas for tour design. Finally, an innovative tourism itinerary especially for the Malaysian Chinese was developed. The concept and approach of service design enhance the importance of a user-centered perspective, and include multidisciplinary methods and tools to gain deep insights into the needs of the tourists. Service experience, systems and processes serve as a basis of thinking. Service design can offer a more comprehensive understanding of tourists, and at the same time, stimulate more creative thinking. This article provides a service design process, which could be applied to tourism field; it also complements previous studies that rarely mentioned the details of the process and the use of tools. The application of such service design process can help tourism practitioners innovate more effectively, place the service design concept into organizational culture, and therefore transform their organization into a service brand, and ultimately create a differentiation advantage.