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Research Background: To recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, the tourism industry needs to implement newer tools and strategies to maximise the effectiveness of their marketing initiatives. Narrative transportation is a phenomenon through which a consumer’s engagement with story content can stimulate self-referencing and elevate brand consistent attitudes, beliefs and intentions (Escalas, 2007; Van Laer, Edson Escalas, Ludwig, & Van Den Hende, 2019). The aim of this paper is to assess the psychological mechanism underlying consumer decision making in the luxury hospitality sector; specifically, by focussing on factors related to individual traits for narrative processing, brand content related elements, online trust, social capital and hotel visit intention.

Originality/value: Existing literature reveals that scant attention has been allocated to assess the effect of trust on purchase intention in relation to the hospitality industry (Huang, Shao, & Wang, 2013; Ladhari & Michaud, 2015). Moreover, the interplay between narrative transportation and trust in the social media context for luxury brand marketing has not been assessed before. Since trust is related to online engagement and behavioural intentions (Chan & Ngai, 2011), this paper adapts the narrative transportation theory and introduces aspects related to online trust in an integrated framework. This paper is one of the first few studies to examine the theory of narrative transportation in the Malaysian luxury hospitality context. Findings may bear practical implications for luxury hospitality players through insights for curating digital marketing campaigns that can enhance trust and behavioural …