Flying on a Magic Carpet: A Storytelling Perspective with IT Mindfulness in Dubai’s Air Taxi Tours

The market for air taxis in tourism mobility is emerging. However, there is a limited understanding of how air taxis can be adopted to enrich tourism experiences. Based on the consumer storytelling theory, this study proposes a novel scenario of utilizing storytelling for air taxi tours in Dubai. This scenario depicts air taxi tours as flying on a magic carpet, like Aladdin. With survey responses collected in Dubai, this study confirmed that narrative processing of storytelling can directly enhance tourists’ expected gamification or indirectly through storytelling-caused affect . The positive relationship between storytelling-caused affect and expected gamification was weaker when somatic fear of flying was high compared to when it was low. Moreover, tourists’ expected gamification improved storytelling-caused intention , which can be strengthened by the moderating role of tourists’ IT mindfulness . Theoretically, this study integrated storytelling with gamification, highlighting the importance of considering tourists’ IT mindfulness in technology-mediated tourism mobility.