One of the worst things any traveller ever has to deal with is a no-show luggage. Even the best-laid travel plans can be easily undermined the moment the luggage fails to appear on the baggage carousel, as the traveller experiences a level of disorientation as well as a stressful experience filling out baggage claim forms and futilely waiting.
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How then can travellers evade the trauma of missing luggage?
If you set to take a trip and looking to guard your luggage, follow these Jumia Travel strategies to ensure your luggage stays on track.
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1 Book a direct flight
Booking connections with different carriers may ensure the cheapest flight – but this also increases the likelihood of losing or delaying your luggage. With almost every connection, luggage is unloaded, transported across the airport and then loaded again onto another plane. Basically, the fewer times the airline needs to handle luggage, the lesser the risk of the luggage getting lost. Booking a direct flight certainly ensures that the chances of luggage missing is limited.
2 Remove all old airline tags
A number of travellers do not bother taking off old tags from their luggage before checking it on for a new trip. This is rather risky as the newest tags may be ignored and the older tags confused for the traveller’s current destination. To avoid this confusion, ensure all old airline tags are taken off and airline code double-checked.
3 Use a smart luggage tag
Rather than use the common tag for your luggage, you may want to opt for a smart tag instead. Smart tags are much more sophisticated and feature codes or microchips which allow travellers to track and detect lost bags. That way, in the case where your luggage is missing, you can easily track it and recover it.
4 Book airlines with impressive baggage handling records
Not all airlines have a good track record when it comes to how they handle luggage as well as how they respond to complaints of missing luggage. To avoid cases of missing luggage, it is important you do proper research and identify such airlines, then avoid them completely.
5 Check in early
There is a higher chance of losing your luggage when you check in late as you are more likely to get separated from your bag. Baggage handlers need time to process luggage and load it onto planes. When you are late, they do not have enough time and there is the risk of it getting missing.
6 Travel light
A simple way to avoid losing luggage is by restricting the number of items you travel with. Try to include all items in a carry-on or hand luggage rather than various bags which will have to be checked in. That way you are directly in charge of your belongings/luggage.
Contributed by Nkem Ndem, PR Associate, Jumia Travel
Skype: live:nkemndemv, Twitter: @ndemv, Instagram: @kem_dem
