Key Takeaways
The global luggage market is projected to grow from $38.8 billion in 2023 to $61.5 billion by 2030, driven by record international tourism of 1.52 billion arrivals in 2025.
Shifting travel habits — more frequent trips, blended itineraries, faster replacement cycles — are making function and durability the primary drivers of luggage purchasing decisions.
In the experience economy, products that serve how people live and move are outperforming those valued mainly for ownership or status. Luggage is the clearest current example.
For a while, during Covid, everything that made life feel expansive was out of bounds. We were grounded. Restaurants were reduced to takeout containers, gatherings with friends became grids on screens, and travel existed mostly as a scrolling activity: old photos, vague plans, wishful thinking. Movement, spontaneity, even the simple pleasure of being somewhere else, were all put on pause. And life somewhat shrank.
So, when the world reopened, we jumped right back with full force. Revenge travel came first, followed by something more revealing: a persistent fatigue that made movement itself feel restorative. In that moment, luggage became the unlikely mascot of modern consumer priorities.
Over the past two years, while traditional luxury categories have wrestled with softer demand, suitcases have kept moving — literally and figuratively. Carry-ons, weekenders, hard shells, and soft bags benefited from a world leaning fully into the experience economy, where spending increasingly follows travel, time away, cultural pursuits, new connections, and activities that feel lived and memorable, rather than objects whose value is measured mainly by ownership.
What is the experience economy?
Let’s talk about the experience economy. Not as a concept, but as a question: what does it actually mean in practice, and how can brands, organizations and even destinations profit from it?
That was on my mind while I was at the 2026 RLC Annual Forum in Riyadh last February, speaking with executives across aviation, retail and hospitality. “Experience” was everywhere. It showed up in very specific discussions about time, friction, movement, and how people travel today.
That shift from transaction to journey came through clearly in how Abdulaziz bin Abdullah Alasakir, Chief Commercial Officer at Riyadh Airports Company, described the challenge: “creating an environment for the passenger through the entire journey and making it seamless.” His point was clear: every touchpoint matters, and the experience has to hold together all the way through.
At the same time, Vijay Talwar, Chief Commercial and Digital Officer at Avolta, framed it even more bluntly: “Premium used to be about price points. Now it’s about how people spend their time and what they value.” That’s a meaningful shift. It puts pressure on brands to think less about positioning and more about participation and how they show up in the moments that matter to the traveler.
What stayed with me from Riyadh was how central travel has become to this whole conversation. It sits at the intersection of time, aspiration, convenience and memory in a way very few categories do.
And that has a direct implication for categories like luggage.
The luggage effect
Why is luggage demand outpacing other retail categories? The numbers are significant. The global luggage market was valued at $38.8 billion in 2023, according to Grand View Research, with projections pointing to $61.5 billion by 2030—a compound annual growth rate of around 7%.
Travel has returned –and not quietly. According to the January 2026 World Tourism Barometer published by UN Tourism, an estimated 1.52 billion people travelled internationally in 2025, setting a new post-pandemic record, and 60 million more than the year before. More importantly, the way people travel has changed. Shorter, more frequent trips. Blended business and leisure. Last-minute decisions. A general willingness to leave, again and again.
Luggage sits directly in that cycle. The more people move, the more pressure they put on the products that move with them. Suitcases wear out faster. Needs evolve. A carry-on bought five years ago can feel too heavy, too rigid, too impractical for how travel now works. The result? It gets replaced.
And that is where this category separates itself from most traditional retail. It isn’t driven by visibility or seasonal relevance. It’s driven by use. It gets dragged across airports, forced into overhead bins, checked, rechecked, tested in ways most products aren’t. It either performs or it doesn’t.
There is also a shift in how people choose it, though it’s worth noting this is largely anecdotal and industry-observed rather than formally studied. Conversations in brand positioning and at industry events suggest less emphasis on logos, more on function: weight, durability, mobility, adaptability. The decision-making process looks closer to buying equipment than buying fashion.
A suitcase carries evidence. It reflects how often someone travels, how far they go, how efficiently they move. It absorbs friction, but it also accumulates memory in the form of scratches, stickers, wear. In a culture increasingly oriented around experience, that kind of visible, repeated use carries its own form of value.
What a suitcase says about the way we spend now
What luggage reveals about the experience economy is something broader than a category success story. The products that thrive in this moment are the ones that earn their place through use and not through visibility, nor through seasonal campaigns, but because people actually need them, repeatedly, in the moments that matter most to them. That is a different kind of relationship between a consumer and an object, and it has implications well beyond travel retail.
For brands trying to understand where the experience-oriented economy actually creates commercial opportunity, luggage is a useful lens. It shows that when spending follows experience rather than ownership, durability becomes desirable, function becomes emotional and replacement becomes loyalty. The question worth asking is which categories have found genuine alignment with how people are choosing to live. In a market increasingly shaped by how people spend their time rather than what they own, that alignment is the product.
A suitcase, in the end, is not a passive object. It is something people choose carefully, carry repeatedly and replace only when it can no longer keep up. That is not a small thing. In a retail landscape still searching for its footing, a category that moves because people are moving and keeps moving because they never really stop is about as well-positioned as anything gets right now.
