Travel Tip Of The Day: Protecting Your Luggage

Losing luggage is one of the top nightmare scenarios for any traveler heading to a foreign destination, especially Africa.

You don’t want to arrive for your two- week vacation with nothing to wear and hundreds of dollars in goods missing.

Whether you are parking your car at the hotel or traveling through an airport, you have to be mindful of your luggage — and there are a few things you can do to ensure it from getting lost or stolen.

Sometimes airport attendants will say you can leave your baggage unattended or take care of it for you. While you can certainly do this, it is almost always better to ensure it doesn’t leave your site until baggage check-in.

Even worse is if you run into criminals running a luggage scam like that that work for the company. Criminals come in all shapes and sizes, including TSA agents, airport workers, and airline attendants — you can’t play it too safe.

You can also get tracking badges and tags through several companies that allow people to report your missing bags, of course, that depends on them not being a thief.

Finally, putting stickers or getting an odd colored bag will help you find your bag and ensure nobody walks off with it when it comes off the plane.

While security at many airports are supposed to check people coming out of the airport to make sure they have the right luggage, this rarely actually happens.

And just in case your luggage is stolen (we’ll cross our fingers for you) carry at least a days worth of stuff in an additional carry-on bag or small accessory.

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