@georgetakei someone at work did that recently. His flight was late & the bags made it to the connecting flight, but it took them longer to get to the gate through the airport. So their bags got to Hawaii more than half a day before them.
@georgetakei Most hotels in Japan have baggage forwarding, not just the posh ones. Most of the posher hotels in Europe still do this, and will even deliver between different hotel chains. Not in the UK, US, or Australia, unfortunately.
@georgetakei Wait, you can still do that. We just used it a couple months ago, shipped the heavy baggage ahead, so that you don't have to carry that heavy shit all along during the train trip. Worked just fine - at least over here in Germany.
@georgetakei you can still do that but you pay freight prices for doing it. Basically, it cost too much. I have seen people who were traveling for work send tools and suitcases ahead by Air freight because they were not going to need them before they caught the plane to travel, but they did not need them for closing meetings. It can be done. Most people don't want to $$$$
@georgetakei In the mid 00s I was seconded to Sendai university and used a Takkyubin service to get my bags from Tokyo to Tohoku while I spent 24 hours exploring Tokyo.
I arrived in Tohoku the next day with my bags already in my room. It was marvellous!
Ive done this by shipping stuff UPS ahead, generally to the hotel. Once on vacation on a Reservation seeing family we also sent stuff back to work for my assistant to hold. Just not to have to drive from Rez to Airport with excess stuff given by family. It was a LONG drive to the airport, lol.
@georgetakei Dunno what would be stopping anyone, FedEx, UPS, etc. are all right there, often even at the airport. The reason we don't? Because it's expensive and unnecessary.
When I was regularly traveling for longer stays, which is usually the case here, I would sometimes ship my luggage and then ship it home instead of dealing with taking it with me.
@georgetakei It was possible when you travelled by train up until the late 80-ies. I used to do it. It was free if you could show a valid ticket for the destination you wanted to send your suitcase to.