Sketchin

Reshaping the marina industry standard

D-Marin asked us to evolve the marina experience by bringing new ideas and digital-oriented solutions to help them become a forerunner in an industry still struggling to embrace a user-centric approach.

D-Marin asked us to evolve the marina experience by bringing new ideas and digital-oriented solutions to help them become a forerunner in an industry still struggling to embrace a user-centric approach.

Industry

Travel & Tourism

Year

2021

Client

D-Marin

End-to-end design of the marinas phygital CX

A completely new and disruptive marina experience combining physical and digital to enhance the short-term customers' visits during high season and long-term customers' permanence within its surroundings.

IF Design Award 2023 Service Design
IF Design Award 2023 Service Design

Outcome

The research phase during the first iterations let the team gather insights about the recent experience in the marinas to understand users’ pain points and expectations. This know-how led to the design of a new overall experience with a clear strategy for every customer phase. Five new blueprints are the base of an international training program, and new digital assets help convey the desired experience.

Service blueprints designed
5
New services launched in the first year
4
Hours of on-site training in three different countries
125

Increasing the value of the experience based on research insights

We began our qualitative research with field activities in Croatia, Turkey and Greece, where we conducted individual interviews and observations of customers and stakeholders. On top of that, we launched online surveys in five European countries to collect data from current and potential customers. 

We identified five user personas living in the marinas differently and with different expectations. We tailored every new experience to each of these personas.

We also paired with D-Marin stakeholders to define new opportunities through idea-generation sessions and collaborative workshops. Insights and solutions emerged in response to those identified within the marina's service system.

We prioritised them to create a roadmap for the upcoming years, according to which we would implement solutions to achieve our goals.

Designing a customer experience piece by piece

First, we created the Experience Steps cards, an output synthesising the previously generated and refined ideas, thus laying the foundations of the new experience. Then, with D-Marin, we created the first rough version of the new vision by assembling the right Experience Steps to generate Service Blueprints for each phase.

As a result of the joint activities and workshops, we designed the entire experience through five blueprints related to five different customer journey phases:

  • Welcoming — customers get to the marina for the first time, with a focus on communication through digital tools.
  • Long-distance caring — customers are not present within the marina and leave their boats in the hands of the marina employees.
  • Leaving the marina — customers leave the marina either for short and medium-term journeys or to return to their home countries.
  • Annual contract sales — related to contract management services, berth negotiation, booking management and contract renewal costs.
  • Up-selling & cross-selling — opportunity mapping related to the numerous sub-services available across all customer journey phases.

Human interactions need to be trained to deliver the right experience

Once we designed the desired experience and condensed it into five detailed blueprints, we only missed the last piece of the process.

We produced a training document and framework executed within ten marinas in 3 different countries (Croatia, Greece and Turkey) under our supervision and with the support of native-speaking associates.

More than 80 people, covering different roles, from sailors to company managers, participated in the training to assimilate the new experience.

New physical experience enhanced by digital assets

To make the new experience even more concrete, we designed several digital deliverables to create an extra-caring service for customers.

  • The Welcome Pack (in four languages for ten marinas) is digital and specific to each marina. Customers are given all the information they need for an ideal stay: from a marina map to general rules of services to tourist information on the surroundings.
  • The Boat Caring Report is a template through which the Front Office digitally keeps the customer updated on the status of their boat and the marina's news when they're not physically on site.

D-Marin wants to disrupt the industry standards by focusing on customer experience. We helped them realise this vision and launch several new services that have a huge business impact on the group.

Project numbers

Weekly iterations
30
D-Marin staff involved
90+
Individual interviews
70+
Collaborative online workshops
15
Marinas visited
11+

Get in touch

Learn more about our projects and what we can do for your business.