LUGGit’s 2.4 Million € R&D projects

by Diogo Correia, Co-founder & COO

Published July 30, 2021

To the question, “What has LUGGit done during the Covid-19 pandemic?”, we answer “A lot”. Our focus went to product development and the steps we need to take towards our vision: a world where no one has to carry their luggage!

Moreover, LUGGit developed two R&D projects funded for over 2 million euros. The projects are:

SCALUM - Scalable, efficient and abstract luggage mobility infrastructure - 630K€ - R&D project with the University of Aveiro.
SSEAA - Seamless Luggage All-around Solution - 1.77M€ -individual R&D project (funded by national funds after receiving the Seal of Excellence by the European Commission).

It is predicted that tourism demand will get to pre-pandemic numbers in the upcoming years, and early check-ins and late check-outs will still be a nightmare for travelers and hosts. Where the first ones want to get rid of their luggage, and the second ones want to provide every client with the best customer experience.

Because of the Pandemic, a trend has already been noted: digitisation has accelerated. About 51% of the Airbnb hosts have already replaced their “traditional” human reception and welcome interaction for digital solutions, according to a recent study conducted by Sciendo.

Thus, hosts will not have anyone at the accommodation to deal with the guests and attend to any particular need they might have. Also, rigid schedules for check-in and check-out are increasing the number of travelers who come across the problem of what to do with their luggage.

Moreover, LUGGit is, right now, the most user-friendly and optimised solution in the world that solves this problem effectively.

Still, we want to go further. We want to provide a multi-city end-to-end solution, where our service does not just work intra-city but inter-city. And, in addition, enable our logistics algorithms and tools to work in other activities.

And how will we do that? Well, this is where our R&D projects come across. Two different axes of innovation are being considered by LUGGit:

1. Vertical - throughout luggage and travelers journey

LUGGit solution is now operating on the edge of the customer journey while traveling, being the first to intervene when a customer arrives in a city and the last one that they use just before leaving, putting us in a privileged position. However, besides being on the edge, our solution can create a fully horizontal and continuous line of interaction, integrating multiple stakeholders, be easy to integrate and use, providing a better experience to the customers while saving them a precious resource: their time.

In 2019 (according to SITA), 0,6% of the total number of handled luggage ended up being damaged or lost, representing a total of 24.8 million bags (a number expected to increase 6% per year). LUGGit intends to provide an integrated and holistic solution that solves all the problems people encounter with their luggage while traveling. Therefore, we want to create a Luggage-as-a-Service (LaaS) solution, an all-around solution where every stakeholder of the customer journey can be connected.

LUGGit aims to be the central point to give the different entities the chance to communicate and interact to provide a better experience to clients, and creating breakthrough solutions to the market. The creation of a communication standard with the airport and off-airport entities will disrupt the entire luggage-related travel market.

By looking at the market, it is easy to spot the advantages of aggregating this solution with airports, airlines, travel agencies, and many more tourism-related stakeholders. Nevertheless, other entities which are not directly linked to the tourism area that suffers from the luggage problems, such as shopping malls, local commerce, museums, can also take great advantage of these integrations.

2. Horizontal - other sector’s last-mile transportation applications

Considering our technological recent advancements, LUGGit is no longer “just” a Mobile APP but is a multi-platform technology capable of providing the tools to control and manage any operation. More than a real-time luggage courier solution, LUGGit is a marketplace that bridges any stakeholder and their customers through a service that allows the collection and delivery of personal goods at the customers’ required time and location.

While e-commerce is growing, the need for companies to provide personalized services with shorter delivery times to their customers is also increasing. It is becoming a relevant competitive advantage that many are trying to put in place while promising a "same day" delivery (turn it into a "next minute"). The challenge of the last mile (last delivery step of the supply chain), widely addressed in the literature of logistics and supply chain, is seen as the most costly and challenging phase of the entire supply chain process, given the customization required. This was precisely the problem that LUGGit has committed to solve from the beginning (with people’s luggage).

By always satisfying the needs of the customers at a given required time and place in real-time, LUGGit can scale up this intention to other areas and provide the tools to transporters that are less agile and lack technological skills.

In summary, LUGGit aims to provide technological tools to give time and comfort to people in all critical stress points related to their luggage while innovating and creating breakthrough solutions to solve last-mile and logistics-related problems.

So next time you ask yourself “what is LUGGit doing?”, you already know the answer 😀