Senior Manager- Experience & Service Design

Miral Destinations; Abu Dhabi; On-site; AED 320,000 - 520,000; Full time

Job summary

Miral Destinations seeks a Senior Manager – Experience and Service Design to lead end-to-end guest experience design across assets, bridging strategy, innovation and service design to deliver memorable journeys.

You will drive collaboration with Insights, Strategy, Operations and Digital to translate insights into scalable service blueprints, ensuring feasibility and governance across initiatives.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's or master's degree in service design or related field.
• Proficiency in design thinking, journey mapping, and blueprinting.
• Ability to articulate frontstage/backstage interactions and translate them into actionable service specifications.
• Experience with large-scale, multi-asset journey mapping and service design.

Responsibilities

• Translate customer insights into holistic journey maps across touchpoints.
• Identify pain points and opportunities to enhance guest satisfaction and efficiency.
• Define experience intent for journey stages and create target-state concepts.
• Facilitate co-creation workshops and ideation sessions to generate concepts.
• Lead development of service blueprints connecting frontstage actions with backstage processes.
• Define operational and system requirements to deliver designed experiences.
• Visualize and document service layers across touchpoints for seamless execution.
• Collaborate with process owners to identify dependencies and cross-functional interactions.
• Bridge gap between conceptual design and BA-level process mapping with the 'experience enablement' layer.
• Create reusable frameworks and standards for blueprinting and delivery across assets.
• Map service ecosystems to show contributions from departments, systems and partners.
• Ensure new assets follow an Experience First, Future Ready design approach.
• Establish governance protocols to integrate design sign-offs in projects.
• Work with Insights, Strategy, Operations, Digital and Assets to keep blueprints guest-led and feasible.
• Engage external partners including IPs and destination assets.
• Partner with Business Analysts for detailed process mapping with traceability.
• Coach teams in design thinking, journey mapping and blueprinting.
• Foster a culture of collaboration, creativity and evidence-based decisions.
• Define metrics for journey and service design success (NPS, CES, throughput, error reduction).
• Incorporate guest feedback and performance data to iterate designs.

Skills

Design thinking

Journey mapping

Service blueprinting

Stakeholder engagement

Cross-functional collaboration

Executive storytelling

Experience design

Process mapping

Facilitation

Change management

Education

Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Service Design/UX/Design Thinking

Tools

Cemantica

Job description

The Senior Manager – Experience and Service Design leads the end-to-end design of guest experiences across Miral Destinations. This role bridges experience strategy, innovation, and technical service design to ensure guest journeys are both inspiring and operationally executable. It integrates the guest perspective (frontstage) with operational delivery systems (backstage), producing clear, evidence-based blueprints that guide cross-functional transformation. The role champions creativity and experience innovation, translating insights into future-ready concepts that balance emotional impact with operational feasibility. Working across teams including Insights, Digital, Operations, and Business Analysis, the Senior Manager transforms ideas into scalable, efficient service systems that deliver memorable, seamless guest experiences.

Job Scope

Guest Experience and Journey Design

• Translate customer insights and qualitative research into holistic journey maps across all touchpoints.
• Identify pain points, emotional highs and lows, and opportunity areas to enhance guest satisfaction and efficiency.
• Define the experience intent for each journey stage and create target-state experience concepts aligned with Miral’s GX principles.
• Facilitate co-creation workshops and ideation sessions to generate innovative experience concepts.

Service Design and Experience Enablement

• Lead the development of service blueprints that connect frontstage guest actions with backstage processes, systems, and enablers.
• Define operational and system requirements necessary to deliver designed experiences, ensuring technical feasibility and alignment with operational capacity.
• Visualize and document service layers (people, process, technology, policy) across touchpoints to ensure seamless execution.
• Collaborate with process owners to identify service dependencies, handovers, and cross-functional interactions.
• Bridge the gap between conceptual experience design and detailed BA-level process mapping by defining the ‘experience enablement’ layer.

Service Ecosystem and Governance

• Create reusable frameworks and standards for consistent service blueprinting and delivery across all assets.
• Map service ecosystems and supporting infrastructure to show how various departments, systems, and partners contribute to guest experiences.
• Ensure new or enhanced assets follow an Experience First, Future Ready design approach.
• Establish review and governance protocols to integrate service design sign-offs in development and transformation projects.

Collaboration and Capability Building

• Work closely with various internal stakeholders including Insights, Strategy, Operations, Digital, and Assets to ensure blueprints are both guest-led and feasible.
• Strong stakeholder engagement and management with external partners including IPs, destination assets and tenant owners.
• Partner with Business Analysts for detailed process mapping, ensuring traceability from guest journey to operational process.
• Coach teams in design thinking, journey mapping, and blueprinting to uplift organizational design capability.
• Foster a culture of collaboration, creativity, and evidence-based decision-making.

Measurement and Continuous Improvement

• Define key metrics for evaluating journey and service design success (e.g., NPS, CES, throughput efficiency, error reduction).
• Incorporate guest feedback loops and operational performance data to iterate designs.
• Continuously benchmark against industry best practices and emerging experience technologies
• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Service Design, User Experience (UX) Design, Design Thinking, or a related field.
• Proven experience (5+ years) in service and experience design
• Proficiency in design thinking methodologies, customer journey mapping, and service blueprinting.
• Experience with large scale and multi-asset journey mapping and service design.
• Ability to articulate frontstage/backstage interactions and translate them into actionable service specifications.
• Strong understanding of end-to-end service architecture, from guest-facing systems to internal enablers.
• Skilled in design facilitation, stakeholder engagement, and cross-functional collaboration.
• Proficiency in journey design tools such as Cemantica
• Excellent written and visual communication skills for executive-level storytelling.
• Experience in integrating digital and physical experience layers within service blueprints.
• Experience with emerging guest experience technologies