I was wondering what others find the safest I.D. for luggage tags? If you put a phone number, this may well be used for fraudulent purposes. If you put a home address, it’s a red flag to some your are away and most people would not bother to locate and contact anyway. I have some suggest using a business phone & address. Any thoughts? Thanks in advance.
Welcome to the dope wayneware
Serious road warrior here.
Personally I don’t worry about what phone number or address I use, as the chance of someone being able to read it as I walk though the airport, and then going to my house to break in are so small I consider them to be non-existent. If you are concerned about this, get a luggage tag with a cover.
The two most important things about luggage tags is
- Make damn sure your info is correct and current.
- I strongly recommend that you buy flexible luggage tags. I have switched over to stitched leather. I kept having the stiff or semi stiff ones get ripped off my luggage. On my next to the last trip this year, my last plastic tag arrived looking like a fish you were trying to land, and a shark attacked it. Only the top 1/2" of the tag was left. I bought a stitched leather tag to replace it.
Enjoy your stay at the dope, and please consider joining us when your month is up.
Another road warrior here:
I usually don’t put my name and phone number on the outside of bags. I usually put a bright colored ‘tail’ with reflective tape. Amongst the sea of olive drab “A-Bags”, I can usually spot mine with either a glance during the day, or a flashlight at night.
Nowadays, I’ve got obnoxiously orange tails embroidered with my last name–which is common enough that I’m not worried about people assuming I’m not at home. But I still have those reflective orange tails for my A-Bags.
Tripler
It’s all about spotting that tail early on at the baggage claim carousel. 
My luggage (from L.L. Bean) has leather luggage tags with covering flaps that snap into place. Someone has to unsnap them to read the info.
And I always tie a bright fluorescent pink shoelace onto each handle to make them easy to spot.
I put my business card, with my cell number on it, into the tag slot backward, with a note on the blank side that says “Information on reverse.”
I came in to say what Shoshana said. She beat me to it.
The more I think of it, the more I wonder if luggage tags are even necessary? As long as you can identify your luggage on a carousel, what else might happen to it where someone would need to look at the tag?
If it falls off the luggage carts in an airport, for example, the airports all use the same way to track luggage, so they can get it to your carousel, or contact you based on your ticket booking information.
If you leave it in a hotel room, then again, the hotel ought to be able to track you down based on the info you gave them/your payment method, etc. I guess if you use an assumed name and pay cash, then you’re SOL, but in that case, you wouldn’t have a tag with your real name and contact with you, now would you?
Maybe I’ve just been lucky, or am too trusting! I do actually have tags on my bags, but at the moment they are just cheap paper United Airlines tags with my surname and the number for the cellphone I have with me when I travel. I can’t imagine needing anything else.
I did see one suitcase in Toronto with a GIANT piece of cardboard taped securely to the suitcase with about 10 layers of packing tape, and the name, address, phone number and age of the person to whom it belonged in GIANT black letters. That was weird.