Backpack, Suitcase or Holdall: What’s Best For Your Trip?

So, you’ve picked your destination, everything is booked and you’re getting ready to go. But the question remains: what’s going to be your luggage of choice? Whether it’s a backpack, a wheeled suitcase, or a grab and go holdall – they all have their benefits and drawbacks, but for certain kinds of trips, there are clear winners.

I’ve gone on different kinds of trips with different types of baggage to try and find out what works best, so I’m going to share my trial-and-error wisdom with you, so you have the easiest trip possible.

Backpack

Ah, the backpack. The traveller’s classic best friend. The choice of gap year roamers and hiking adventurers the world over. I love a backpack, purely for the feeling you get when you grab it from the carousel, sling it over your shoulders and you feel ready to take on the destination beyond the airport doors. It’s a pretty good feeling.

However, the amount of times I’ve had to repack my backpack because I want to find something specific is fairly ridiculous. Even when you start out with certain types of clothing or shoes or toiletries in specific parts of your bag, as you travel and pull things out and rummage around, everything rejigs.

Of course, the way to go about this is to invest in some packing cubes, then even when you do want to pull them out to find that specific piece of clothing or whatever, it’s super quick and convenient to repack again. The good thing is, these have become really popular so you can get sets fairly cheaply online and they do make a difference, especially if you’re travelling for a while.

The other great thing about backpacks is that they’re squishy, so fitting them into the cargo hold of a bus, the bag of a cab, in a small hostel locker – wherever – it’s a very useful skill to have. What I would say is to make sure you tie up the excess adjustable straps so that they don’t get caught on baggage carousels or on other pieces of luggage. If the bag gets stuck and you try and yank it, it might tear and no one wants to be losing bits and pieces because your bag isn’t secure.

Suitcases

Next up are suitcases, which are popular amongst families and resortgoers. Suitcases are great if you’re staying in one or two places for quite a while, but despite having wheels, they can be quite cumbersome to move around multiple places. If you’ve ever tried to take a suitcase on a subway escalator or tried to work out how big your Uber needs to be to fit your cases in the back, you’ll know what I mean.

The good thing about suitcases is that you can access everything you’ve packed really easily as well as being able to keep all your clothes folded nicely – something that backpacks are not renowned for… Another thing to consider is that suitcases tend to be more durable and secure, so when bags are being chucked around baggage claim, your possessions are probably going to come out of it in better condition.

So if you’re on a trip where you want to look good, access things quickly, and stay in the same place for a while, suitcases are a pretty good option. If you’re on hop-on, hop off buses all the time, staying in hostels with 10 flights of stairs and no lifts, or if you’re exploring somewhere off the beaten path where roller wheels might not be ideal, then maybe leave the case at home.

Holdalls

Holdalls are essentially a bigger version of the Weekender bag. Seen more as a guy’s style of luggage, it’s underrated as a squishy, low-maintenance bag that can be fully opened up to see all the contents without having to fully unpack.

The thing is, if you’re packing a lot of things, holdalls can get heavy very quickly and the fact that it’s either a single shoulder strap or regular hand-held handles, it’s not something you want to be lugging around for long. If you’re going for a short trip, or are packing light and washing as you go, this might be a good option for you.

A bonus for holdalls is that if they’re not overpacked you can sometimes get away with them looking small enough for carry-on luggage. If this is the case (pun intended) it could save you up to £80 on-hold luggage if it’s not included.

I recently bought a structured holdall for my Sri Lanka trip. This bag in particular was a hybrid between a backpack and a case – unlike normal holdalls, it had a metal backbone with some wheels and a hideable handle. But it did mean that I could open it up entirely to get to everything that I wanted to and it was lightweight and squishy enough to get from place to place in minibuses, up dirt tracks, upstairs, and halfway across the world.

However, it did start to break where the roller frame and the canvas meet, so it’s probably not the most durable option. Since then I’ve bought a new all-singing, all-dancing backpack that, due to the pandemic, hasn’t left my flat, but for the amount of hopping from place to place that I tend to do on my bigger trips, backpacks are still my one true luggage love, even if at 5ft1 they are almost always bigger than me…

So, what’s your go-to luggage choice and why? Share your tips and experiences down below!