BA teams up with Portr to offer London-wide luggage pick up

Passengers on board British Airways flights can have their bags picked up and checked in from any address in London thanks to a new service from travel tech firm Portr. Luggage – under a passenger’s designated weight allowance – can be collected from homes, offices or hotel lobbies around Greater London through the AirPortr + … Continue reading BA teams up with Portr to offer London-wide luggage pick up

Passengers on board British Airways flights can have their bags picked up and checked in from any address in London thanks to a new service from travel tech firm Portr.

Luggage – under a passenger’s designated weight allowance – can be collected from homes, offices or hotel lobbies around Greater London through the AirPortr + Bag Check-In service and taken to Heathrow, Gatwick or London City airports.

It leaves passengers luggage-free until they arrive at baggage reclaim at their destination, with prices starting from £30 and £10 for additional bags.

Start-up Portr, which describes its new service as a “game changer”, has just received £6.3 million Series A investment to fund the project.

Investors in the recent funding round included two Venture Capital Trust Funds managed by leading London fund manager Hargreave Hale, specialist technology start-up fund Force Over Mass Capital and a number of angel investors with backgrounds in SaaS, technology and on-demand services.

Portr believes its new system – which is available from October 26 – will make travelling to airports by public transport easier and create more time to squeeze in extra business meetings.

Chief executive Randel Darby said: “The service has been years in the planning and is a game changer in international travel. The industry has introduced mobile check-in, self-service and tagging, digitised the passport control process and successfully introduced paper-free boarding utilising smart phone technology to improve the passenger experience. But you can still only travel as fast, or in a way that your bags will allow you to. We expend so much effort and time carrying our bags around cities, to and from airports and standing in queues because of them.

Portr and British Airways have worked with the Civil Aviation Authority, Department for Transport and Department for Homeland Security on the service.