New Business Opportunity?

More than ever, I'm hearing people complaining about airlines losing luggage. It's always been a complaint, enhanced by the hub and spoke airlines system, where most times, both you and your luggage have to change planes before arriving at your destination.

FAA rules prohibiting what we can carry onto flights, force most people to check their luggage rather than carry it with them in the cabin.

Seems to me that UPS and FedEx are missing a huge opportunity here.

Wouldn't it make sense for (arguably) the best parcel delivery services in the world ship your luggage directly to your hotel?

It seems to me that they could offer huge travel benefits:

1. Travel light. Just get on the plane with a good book.
2. No worries about whether your luggage will make your connecting flight.
3. Your luggage would not be held hostage, if your flight was cancelled. Rebook on any airline.
4. Traceable luggage handling (package tracking) means that even if it does get lost, it'll be found. No airline can guarantee that!
5. When at your destination, no waiting to reclaim luggage. Just get off the plane, grab a cab and arrive at your hotel.

It would offer hotels the opportunity to enhance their services as well - delivering your bags directly to your room and secondly, shipping your bags via FedEx or UPS, back home when your stay was over.

Maybe this is a service that Hotels should be offering? They could build the service costs into their room rates.

What's holding the airlines back? They could help eliminate or reduce a huge source of service complaints. It would help reduce the strain on airline security. it would take some of the burden off of luggage handlers. It would speed up the check-in experience. It would make travelling more pleasant.

It obviously would cost more to ship bags separately, but if UPS and FedEx spent time building this business model, I'm certain that prices would drop over time.

And we might all be a little happier for it.