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The contemporary traveller wishes, beyond the simple contemplation, to experience and get involved with a city as a local resident. On the other hand, the resident itself often does not know the city deeply and craves to explore this space, seeking for new experiences and the feeling of belonging. How to facilitate the connection between these people and the small entrepreneurs and artists of the city, who, on the flip side, need to offer their services, but suffer from the lack of visibility and incentive? Design emerges here as a tool to enable opportunities and solve problems. The methodology of this research follows an applicable cutout of the creative process of Design Thinking (divided into the phases of inspiration, ideation and implementation) having been worked only on the first phase. This approach encourages the researcher to make the right questions before thinking about giving answers and solutions to a given question. Thus, users are investigated in an empathetic way, in order to understand their real needs, making a critical analysis of the raised data to understand the problems and opportunities. This article reports the investigation of creative tourism in Recife (Brazil) and the application of design processes, aiming to alert to the tourism potential and to guide the development of future projects involving services, which allows a true cultural and affective immersion. The purpose is to bring the designer's performance to the issue, in order to promote memorable experiences for all involved, in addition to local economy development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]