Custom luggage tags: what to put on one

Front of the tag, three lines and no more. Every extra line is something a reader has to scan past in a busy baggage office.

1. Your full name as it appears on the booking, so the tag matches the airline's own record.
2. A mobile number with the country code — +1 for the US. A number without a country code is unusable to an agent in another country, which is exactly where a bag goes missing.
3. An email address. This is the line most people skip and the one that works when you are in the air, in a different time zone, or on a phone with no roaming.

On the back, if the tag has a back: your destination for this trip - the hotel name and city is enough - and a second contact who is not traveling with you. Both of those are trip-specific, which is an argument for a write-on card over engraving.

• Your home address. The airline already has it from the booking. On a tag it tells strangers your house is unoccupied.
• Your flight number or dates. Out of date the moment anything is rebooked, and it clutters the lines that matter.
• Frequent flyer numbers. Enough of an identifier to be worth not broadcasting, and no use to whoever finds the bag.
• Anything that reads as valuable. A tag saying which camera body is inside is a shopping list.
• A company logo on a personal trip, if the company is one people have opinions about.

There are four routes and they differ mostly in how permanent the result is.

The honest recommendation for most people is the cheapest one: a write-on card behind a privacy flap, filled in with a permanent marker. Engraving is worth it for a bag you expect to own for a decade and a phone number you do not expect to change.

Walk past any airport baggage office and look at the lost-tag box - it is full of tags with broken loops, not broken tags. A conveyor edge, a baggage cart lip or a handler's hook catches the loop, and the tag leaves with it.

• Steel cable is the strongest common attachment and the reason the engraved pick above ranks where it does.
• Riveted leather or nylon straps are next, provided the rivet goes through both layers.
• Buckled straps are convenient and the first thing to work loose. Check them before every trip.
• Thin plastic loops — the kind shipped with cheap tags — are the ones in the box. Replace them with a cable tie or a cable loop on day one.

Attach the tag to a fixed grab handle rather than the telescoping handle, which is pushed down into its housing when the bag is checked and can shear a tag against the shell.

A tag is passive: it works if a human finds your bag and decides to use the information. A tracker is active: it tells you where the bag is whether anyone has found it or not, which in practice is what shortens a delayed-baggage case, because you can tell the agent the bag is still at the connecting airport instead of waiting for their system to notice.

They are not alternatives. Run both: a contact tag on the outside handle and a tracker inside the bag where it cannot be removed. Which tracker depends mostly on your phone - best luggage trackers for the picks, AirTag vs Tile for luggage for the network argument, and best luggage trackers for Android if you are not on an iPhone.

And if the bag does go missing, the clock starts at the carousel, not at the hotel — what to do if the airline loses your luggage has the order of operations.

Two per checked bag, and here is why: the airline's own adhesive barcode tag is the one its system reads, and it is also the one that gets ripped off in a conveyor jam. Your tag is the backup for that, so having a second of your own is the backup for the backup, at a cost of a few dollars.

1. One tag with contact details on a fixed grab handle.
2. One printed card with the same details inside, on top of your clothes.
3. Remove old airline barcode stickers before every trip - a stale barcode is a genuine routing hazard, not just clutter.

If your luggage is a matching set, tag every piece individually rather than assuming they travel together — best luggage tags covers buying them in multiples, and a bright strap does the same identifiability job from further away (best luggage straps). Matching sets are most common at the budget end, which is also where the finishes are least distinctive — see the best cheap luggage.

A tag and a tracker are two of a small number of small objects that genuinely earn their place in a bag. Best travel gadgets ranks eight of them by how often each one actually comes out, which is the only honest test.