NOT-SO-BON VOYAGE: A lot can go wrong on holiday, so be prepared Picture: GALLO IMAGES/GETTY IMAGES

The biggest lesson I brought back from holiday is: don't just hop into the car the rental company allocates and drive off. Take a minute to inspect it first and report even the smallest blemishes.

I got an extra R286.82 slapped on my bill for a scratch on a rear hub-cap. (Besides replacing the hub-cap for R183, another R87.72 was added for admin.) Maybe I'm being conspiratorial here, but I can't help suspecting I'm not the only customer the car hire firm has scratched with this same hub-cap.

Then again, it was a better car than I originally booked. And despite the final bills now rolling in, the break refreshed my high opinion of the affordable travel packages offered by budget airline websites.

Fortunately, the hub-cap was about my only holiday hassle. Among the many e-mails waiting back at the office were tips from travelstart.co.za on how to avoid lost-luggage woes.

Stephan Ekbergh, CEO and founder of Travelstart, said: "In South Africa, around 10000 personal items were reported lost or stolen in 2008, and this does not include damaged and stolen luggage. Few passengers seem to know that if their luggage is lost, damaged or merely delayed for more than four hours, they are entitled to compensation from the airline."

The industry standard is $20 per kilogram of lost or delayed luggage. But some airlines compensate well above this rate. For instance, Air Botswana pays $42 per kilogram compensation.

Ekbergh offered the following tips:

• Where possible, travel only with carry-on luggage and take a spare set of clothing in case your check-in luggage is lost;
• Place your contact information inside and outside every bag;
• Customise the look of your bag to make it easy to identify;
• Keep valuable items with you, preferably under the seat in front of you;
• Make sure that you keep the luggage stub from your checked-in luggage, as it is a critical piece of information to prove ownership if your luggage is lost or stolen;
• Always report the loss of checked-in luggage immediately;
• Don't pack hazardous goods. If uncertain, check with your travel agent, airline or airport officials.
• Besides scratched hub-cap surcharges, the travel industry is notorious for other hidden costs.

Ekbergh provided the following example: "A round-trip airfare from Cape Town to London's Heathrow is advertised at a reasonable R6500 on South African Airways - until you reach the end of the booking process and the fare jumps to R9421 as a result of hidden taxes, fees and fuel surcharges.

"Why not just show the full fare and save the traveller the disappointment from the onset? It is not good business practice or ethical to mislead travellers by advertising rates that do not reflect the full price, and it is going to lead to mistrust among customers, which is not good for the industry.

"A solution would be for government to enforce transparency in the way the industry advertises and quotes fares. This is the case in Europe, where new transparency legislation was passed last year.

"It will take a while for this to become a reality in South Africa, but, in the meantime, customers are suffering and are not getting what they want - and because of this, we believe it is our duty to outline this issue and call on the industry to be more honest," said Ekbergh.

Although there are about 1000 South Africans in jails globally convicted for crimes relating to drug trafficking, a mere 13% of respondents to a poll on travelstart.co.za said they would be terrified of being mistaken for a drug mule and given a full body search.

The moral is: take care to lock all your luggage because you need to be as worried about what criminals put in as what they might take out of your suitcase.