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.
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