While often necessary, holiday travel is an expensive and stressful experience. The Co-Founder of Lugless, Brian Altomare, is sharing his tips and tricks for a seamless travel experience – during the holidays or anytime. Lugless is a company which ships your luggage to your final destination for you. Not only does it allow you to travel free of cumbersome luggage, there’s a good chance it’s less expensive than the airline baggage fees – especially if you’re a large family or have overweight suitcases. A Lugless representative will pick your bags up a few days ahead of your trip and deliver them safe and sound to your final destination. Lugless guarantees that your luggage will arrive on time and if for some reason it doesn’t, your delivery is free and the company will reimburse you for any consequential expenses (up to $500). If your destination wedding guests are unaccustomed to traveling and are nervous about the logistics of packing for a long trip or navigating a foreign airport, it might be helpful to pass along these tips to your guests!

Holiday Travel Tip # 1: Roll Clothes – Don’t Fold

It might seem simple and obvious, but most travelers still do not maximize their luggage space when packing for a trip. If you roll all your clothes – from pants, to jackets, to shirts, you increase the extra space by about one-third. And an added bonus is your clothes won’t be wrinkled when you unpack!

Holiday Travel Tip # 2: Buy a $9 Luggage Scale on Amazon.com

People DO love surprises around the holiday time, but not at the check-in gate! Avoid extra baggage fees for overweight luggage by weighing it prior to getting to the airport. There is no need to pay these extra fees, or worse, take out your personal clothes in front of everyone in line just to meet the airline weight requirement.

Holiday Travel Tip # 3: No Belt, No Shoelaces, TSA Approved Laptop Bags

This is my favorite block of travel ideas for more sanity through security.  Always wear slip on shoes, sneakers or sandals and pack your belt in a carry on so you don’t have to take it off through security. Also, only use a TSA approved laptop bag so you never have to worry about taking it out.

Holiday Travel Tip # 4: Take Two Smaller Bags, Not One Medium Sized Bag

If you want to bring a bag onto the plane, make sure to take two smaller bags if trying to avoid fees and not one medium sized bag that might be checked at the gate. A staggering percent of bags that make it to the terminal gate are asked to be checked last minute before boarding due to space issues. The other reason is because the FAA fines airlines for late take offs and extra carry-on bags in the overhead are a big issue for on-time arrivals and departures. Airlines even have staff that roam the terminals and actually try and get travelers to pay or check bags if they think that the bags are too large and should not have passed through initially. 

Holiday Travel Tip # 5: Ship your Luggage

Next time you fly – Ship your bags ahead of time. It is a much more enjoyable experience, I should know. I am the co-founder of LugLess.com, a door-to-door luggage shipping service for travelers that are tired of airline baggage fees, waiting in crowded check-in lines, tapping their feet at baggage claim and dealing with the prospect of lost luggage. We provide on-time guaranteed service and rates which are less than FedEx, UPS and DHL for express and international shipping. We ship to over 200 countries. Our company tagline is Travel without the Baggage, in every sense of the word. But if you do not want to use our service, that’s totally okay, I care more that you experience “baggage-free” travel and highly recommend trying our service or one like us to experience a much more relaxing upcoming holiday trip.