A little time spent selecting the right luggage for your trip can help avoid any disasters. We personally recommend hard cases, especially for holidays or longer trips, such as those from Samsonite, as they are a lot sturdier and far more reliable. Granted they do reduce your overall weight allowance but at least the contents will be that much safer. We recommend going for the larger size even if you think you won’t need so much space, a larger size allows unforeseen purchases to be packed without the need for buying new bags.

If you do opt for a hard case, try personalizing it a little by adding some stickers or pictures etc. That way there can be no confusion about which suitcases are yours at the luggage carousel.

Most new suitcases have combination locks. We asked a luggage handler at London’s Heathrow Airport what the most common combination was and were surprised to learn that the most common is ‘000′ which is the default combination the suitcase ships with. With this in mind you may want to consider changing the combination to something more personal to you.