Exploring luxury train experience quality: a netnographic study across ten iconic journeys

Purpose This study advances scholarship on sustainable and transformative luxury by showing how slow, place-connected mobilities generate meaningful guest experiences via luxury trains. Design/methodology/approach A netnographic analysis of 432 TripAdvisor reviews across ten internationally-recognised luxury trains was conducted, and data analysed through the Interactive Experience Quality (IXQ) model as a theoretical lens. Findings Findings highlight three interpretive movements: anticipation and symbolic expectation-setting; immersive engagement through motion, space, and sociability; and lingering emotional aftertaste, revealing how luxury trains foster deep emotional resonance, narrative continuity, and experiential congruence through a blend of mobility, heritage aesthetics, and relational hospitality. Practical implications Luxury train operators may benefit from adopting a journey-wide experience design approach that prioritises sequencing, hosting, and interpretation as core design resources. Doing so can support credible sustainability and transformative luxury positioning by embedding place engagement and learning opportunities into the journey in ways that are coherent, ethically mindful, and practicable in small, mobile contexts. Originality/value The study positions luxury train travel as a theoretically generative empirical context for examining experience quality in motion, extending existing experience scholarship beyond predominantly static luxury settings and large-scale mobile formats, positioning luxury trains as an evolving site of experiential, sustainable, and transformative consumption.