With the rise of charges for checked luggage, more recently charging for carry-ons (for example, on Spirit Airlines), it is quite possible that there will soon be charges for personal items too.
Is it possible to travel with no luggage? I mean, if one is traveling for a week to a vacation spot, is it possible to do so with no luggage? How does one go about this?
Ship your luggage in advance
If you plan in advance, you can send your luggage via ground shipping. This happens often in countries where people travel by rail and have to handle their own luggage otherwise. Also, if you have multiple pieces, bulky items like skis, or are severely overweight, shipping can be much cheaper than paying the airline.
This also works well on the return trip: you don't need your dirty clothes or toiletries immediately when returning home, so they can show up a few days later.
There are a few tricks, in my experience, that make this possible.
Simple Case
In the summertime, there is very little need for heavy clothing. If your destination is warm, one can board a plane, train or bus wearing just shorts, shirt, underwear, a hat, and sandals. Basically, just bring nothing besides wallet, passport, and toothbrush.
While it is possible to re-wear your clothing day after day, most people find this a bit gross. So clothing should be washed at the end of each day! Its easy - just start taking a shower with all your cloths on, and wash & rinse each piece of clothing with body wash or soap before you taking it off. Hang the clothing to dry while you are sleeping, and you'll have fresh clothing in the morning.
Complicated Case
What if you will go to the beach, and you don't want to swim in your shorts? What if the place you are going is too humid, and your shirt won't dry overnight? What if you are staying in a youth hostel, and thus can't sleep naked?
In this case, wear the bathing suit and any other spare clothing onto the airplane. Bring an empty plastic grocery bag in your pocket. Once on the final leg of your journey, you can stick the excess clothing into the plastic bag.
Very Easy Case
If you are going to visit someone, just make plans to borrow their clothing while you are there.
I don't think it works going for anywhere, but here are some thoughts to start with:
In this TED Talk, Jessi Arrington suggests packing just your underwear. Buy all of your clothes at a thrift shop on arrival, then donate it back when you leave.
I'd just like to point out that if you are entering other countries and clearing customs and immigration to do so, the border officers of the destination country may find it very curious that you have nothing with you, particularly if you are not leaving the country later that same day. That may slow things down for you at the immigration point, and will likely result in secondary inspection.
I think it unlikely that carry-ons will be completely banned, or have charges against them.
This, for the likely consequence being that people will start to wear as much as possible. And it's possible to wear a lot.
Here's one example. But, I think I remember there being several.
Great yet overly broad question. It is possible to travel without much but it is not possible to do so for any type of travel or destination and certainly not without compensating for it in money.
At the very least you need to have proper ID which will include passport for international travel. You will either have physical boarding passes on you or a phone, in which case you probably are going to take a charger and cable with you too. You must have all prescription medicines you normally take with you too since those are difficult to get in a good percentage of countries. Some airlines already charge for carry-on but so far they all allow personal items, I really don't think they can go away. Even though many of these things can be inserted into vest or jacket pockets, that space has limits for comfort. Sometimes I was forced to carry a huge load (6-8kg) on a vest to satisfy carry-on limits and I felt rather squeezed, particularly since economy seats are not roomy.
Toiletries can probably be done without as many hotels provide them. Depends on your needs but if you shave for example, getting the whole razor, blade, shaving gel, aftershave kit at each destination might not be easy or cheap. Sunscreen can be exorbitant if you buy it at your destination and I know of no hotel that gives some for free. I recall running out of it in Cuba and the smallest bottle was over $25 USD.
You need clothes. Sure you can wash the ones you are wearing over and over but what are you going to wear while doing laundry? You might also need clothes that are different than your travel ones if you are heading to a different climate. Canadiana often leave from a -30C airport in shorts to avoid taking a heavy jacket and boots to a +30C destination! They look really frozen while waiting for a taxi on the way back.
You can travel between places you or your family has homes and stash a set of clothes in each place but that is fairly limiting. If you are travelling to a typical vacation spot such as a Caribbean island and you have no place there already, there is not much choice. If you were rich you could shop for clothes and buy toiletries at each destination but it takes time and do you really want to spend your vacation looking for what you will wear and then abandon a few days later. If you have no luggage to go, then you probably don't want any to come back with.
Yes. You can travel with less than 3kgs of luggage. Just bring your clothes or buy them there.
I traveled for 6 weeks in Europe in about 12 Cities. It cost me nothing ( < $2,000USD all in ), I traveled with about 5kg of stuff and I never felt like I was "missing out" because I didn't lug around a huge suitcase. Everything is available for you in the locations you're traveling to. Everything.
You don't need a:
Also: Carry on isn't going anywhere. Do we charge for train carry on after how many hundreds of years?
All my experience comes from EU travel so keep that in mind.
Most answers suggest buying your stuff but is it really worth it to not pay 40-50£ for a return checked 20kg luggage ?
Hand luggage you can take with you on the plain is free for every airline I've used here in the EU. I'd very frequently just pack all my week's necessitates in that carry-on and travel. If you're good enough packer you can very easily fit everything you'd need for a week+ and have room to spare. Being male I don't need that much liquid crap on me.
Here are some tricks though:
For this one you'd have to have been on the airport before. Airlines allow for the duty-free bags to go on their planes without counting them as your luggage. I used to have one bag from an airport I'd frequently take off from, that can be 2-5kg of extra stuff you can take.
The easier option you can always do is just stuff your clothes one inside the other. Once I didn't have any room or KG allowance on my carry-on so inside my overcoat i had a hoodie, inside it I had another, inside it I had couple of shirts, had the coat on my arm the whole time - zero problems not counting the slight inconvenience of carrying it around.
I'd recommend the stuffed coat + carry on as your cheapest most hassle free option, especially if you're going on a vacation and wouldn't like spending time in overpriced malls looking for a shirt, instead of the beach.
