How to Lower the Chances of Lost Luggage While Traveling

Dealing with lost luggage can ruin any trip or vacation. Even though airlines only actually lose 1 percent of the luggage they handle each year that adds up to a whopping 20 million bags a year. Follow these travel tips to reduce your risk of lost luggage.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

1. Check in early to allow the airline plenty of time to label your bag correctly and send it in the right direction. Most lost luggage belongs to people who check in at the last minute.

2. Label clearly every piece of luggage with a sealed and waterproof tag. Include your name, address, telephone number and email address.

3. Include a label on the inside of your bag as well. If your heavy-duty label falls off the outside of your bag during the rigors of airline travel, airport employees will still be able to consult this interior label.

4. Make sure the airline check-in employee has labeled your bag with the correct routing tag, if you can. During high-traffic periods, employees sometimes put the right label on the wrong bag. The label should have the three-letter airport code of your final destination.

5. Consider buying luggage that is a distinctive shape or color. Some travelers mistake other people's luggage for their own. Avoid having your luggage mistakenly swiped by another traveler by carrying luggage like nobody else's.

6. Make your look-alike luggage more unique by tying a bright ribbon to it or wrapping it with a colorful, sturdy strap.

7. Avoid voluntarily bumping yourself from an overbooked flight. Even though the airlines offer enticing incentives to those who choose to take a later flight, you may pay a steep price in deciding to change flights at the last minute. By this point, your luggage has often been checked through to your destination, and you and your luggage will almost certainly arrive at different times.

Tips & Warnings

• Be sure to include your telephone number on your luggage tags. In the event that your lost luggage is found, airport employees are more likely to call you before consulting the address you've provided.
• Remember to claim any luggage you might have checked upon boarding a small airplane. This luggage must be claimed as you deplane. Many passengers forget to claim this luggage in their hurry to catch their connecting flights.
• Avoid the issue of lost luggage by packing only a carry-on bag and not checking any luggage at all.
• Use a private shipping company to deliver your luggage, and bypass airline luggage transportation. These services are more expensive, and you will not be able to travel with your luggage. However, delivery is guaranteed.
• Airlines consider luggage without a name tag to be undeliverable. Always label your luggage with your name, address, telephone number and email address.