Sunday, October 29, 2006

Shipping Luggage?

Given that I'm hopping around the country on crutches at the moment--owing to a broken foot--an ad for The Luggage Club in the airline magazine caught my eye. (BTW, the TSA seems to be at a complete loss as to how to handle passengars with crutches; among other things, your carry-ons--including laptop taken out of its case--are left lying on the conveyor table to crash to the ground or walk away while they conduct their hand inspection of you. But that's another rant.)

I've discussed some other possible consequences of carry-on restrictions before. Apparently, they've also been a boon for the luggage shipment business according to this LA Times article. I do note that my flight from Boston to Las Vegas, looking to be predominantly vacation travelers, had very lightly loaded overhead bins--something I last remember from, well, never.

Unfortunately, the door to door services are--as might be expected--pricey. Indeed, The Luggage Club doesn't even provide any pricing guidelines on its site that I can see; the aforementioned LA Times article says to expect about $100 per bag each way. The site also suggests that the service is marketed toward some fairly specific classes of users--people with bulky sports equipment like golf clubs or scuba gear or businesses with tradeshow material.

So, nice idea. But, given that we're no longer living in Internet Boom 1.0, it's an idea whose economics make it a niche.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

As a padi certified diver I have special equipment I need to take with me when I travel. HOwever I have bags that are desigend specifically for this and would not dream of paying someone $100 or more per bag to have them move the gear when I can do it myself.