Winter visitor travel, summer vacation travel, conference travel has one thing in common: a travel day is a lost day and you might lose your luggage. Here are some ideas* on how to beat the hassle and arrive at your destination unscathed:

• Put a business card inside your suitcase. Your bag rides many conveyor belts, gets thrown onto carts and into plane cargo bays – all opportunities for luggage and airline routing tags to get mutilated. When airline staff need to find a bag’s owner, they open it looking for owner identification. Voila – there’s your business card to the rescue.
• Arriving at the airport without your passport can be a big trip spoiler. If you put one shoe alongside your passport, spare cash, and jewelry in your hotel room safe, when you pack to leave, that missing shoe will remind you to clear out the safe.
• Your hotel thermostat might be laden with indecipherable instructions or inaccessible all together. Forget the front desk – just Google the manufacturer’s website and use their published “override code.”
• The MiFlight app can tell you how long a wait will greet you at the security checkpoint. Just input your location and gate to see estimated wait times.
• If your jet lag doesn’t respond to cures such as crystals or vitamin infusions, try the app timeshifter.com several days before your next departure. You input your destination, sleep habits, and flight times and an algorithm prescribes how much sun exposure, nap time, and caffeine is advisable.
• Tipping in a foreign location where you don’t speak the language? Try globe.studio/globetipping. A receipt scanner checks your location via GPS and displays the local gratuity guidelines.
• Use theinfatuation.com to find the rating of local restaurants. And you get bonus advice i.e. “Where to Eat with Someone Who’s Cooler Than You.”
• Decoding those crazy destination codes have you confused? Here are a few favorites: BUD is not beer but Budapest; DOH is Quatar and has nothing to do with the Simpsons; OHD is O’Hare International which used to be Old Orchard Field. Who knew? For all the codes, click here.

Enjoy you trip.

(*gleaned from the Far and Away and WSJ Travel Section)