Need luggage recommendation

[pudy68]

I would like a good piece of luggage that also doubles as a garment bag...what do you guys recommend? It doesn't need to fit in the overhead bins. A plus would be a hardshell, and for extra credit, make it weatherproof. Anyone want to chime in?

[Keith1010]

I am not sure if this is what you are thinking of but we usually get a regular suitcase that also includes a suiter and the suiter allows us to hang various items in it on hangers from suits to dresses.

 

We use Travelpro and they make a wife range of items from with different materials at different price points.

 

We happen to get the 28" size with the suiter but they also make sizes that are smaller than this that also include suiters.

 

Keith

[Happy ks]

Luggage has changed dramatically in the last couple years. With airlines charging for weight, the quality of soft sided luggage has gone down. The weight in the frame, fabric and wheel system was what suffered. I've worked a part time job in a luggage store for 4 years now and have watched the changes being made. Some good, some bad.

 

We now see more "hard" sided luggage. The better brands are made with polycarbonate or a blend of polycarbonate and ABS plastic. Pure polycarbonate is stronger than the blend, but some say not in extreme cold, so I suppose it depends on where you are traveling to or from. The addition of ABS is to withstand freezing temps.

 

The beauty of the poly or poly blend is that it is strong and weighs less than soft sided cases, plus it can pack more than soft sided cases.

 

We don't carry a single brand of hard sided luggage that has a built in garment bag, but we do sell a seperate garment sleeve that will fit into the cases.

 

There are so many brands and price points I hesitate to make a recommendation, but I do have to say Rimowa is top of the line. Coming n a close second would be Tumi Vapor, followed by Victorinox Spectra and then Heys. Those are the brands we carry, I'm not familiar with a lot of others. We do carry a brand, Athalon and I hesitate to sell it, it's cheaper than the others, but the quality just isn't there.

 

My suggestion would be to go in person to see luggage rather than take recommendations online. Unless you know a brand well (name doesn't always mean quality) you might be in for a surprise when it's delivered. Luggage stores sell luggage for the same price as most online sources, or they will match pricing from legitimate sources. Department stores, such as Macy's, sell the product for the same price as luggage stores, many times their "sale" price is the same price we sell it for every day.

 

You can purchase from end of the line stores, such as Ross or TJ Maxx, but you will get pieces that are either inferior quality made for that market, or discontinued pieces. When I have seen good quality pieces there, it's typically one odd piece that went unsold for years. I know I've even seen Tumi in our local TJ Maxx, a piece that had been discontinued for several years...but it was a good buy.

 

What I don't recommend is purchasing sets of luggage. You don't always get the sizes you need, there is usually only one or two of the pieces that actually work for a persons needs in those sets, usually one decent sized case, one that kinda works, the others too small to really hold much, or just a bit too large for carry on, but small for a checked piece.

 

It all comes down to budget, personal taste and travel. I'd not try to sell expensive pieces to a person looking to only travel once a year, but I encourage people who are frequent travelers to spend more for better quality.

 

The biggest difference with better quality is that a nicer piece is worth the time and effort to repair it if it is broken. A cheap piece you would just throw out and purchase new again. We charge $22.50 to send a piece in for repair, some of our brands have lifetime warranties that even cover airline damage. To me it's like buying leather shoes vs. vinyl, and you have to try on those shoes to make sure they fit your foot.

 

I do read here on occasion of people who travel a lot and just buy cheap and throw away when the case is unusable. To me that is spending way more in the long run. Good quality bags can be repaired and we have loaner pieces our customers can use, free of charge, for the duration of the repair if they need it.

[pudy68]

Thank you Keith & Happy ks! I appreciate the responses. :)

[sjcruiser]

Depending on if we drive or fly to our port destination, we usually take a combination of several bags to include rolling duffel, rolling carry on, and rolling garment bag. With the high cost of checking bags now except for SW, we'll be looking at local cruises.

[griffy116]

Bought my last nice piece of luggage because of the damage that just happens. This time I went with an inexpensive hard-shell type that was on sale (Black Friday) for the upcoming cruise. I'm sick of seeing a favorite piece of luggage arrive with horrible scratches, nasty black grease marks, and this last time, the FRAME was actually bent and I didn't realize it till I got home. If it's going to be "disposable" then I'm not paying a fortune.