A mountain silhouette, a grand hotel façade, a strip of sunlit beach: a luggage label could turn a destination into an image small enough to fit in your hand. Pasted onto a travelling trunk, it became an advertisement in motion. Saved in an album, it became a souvenir. Today, it offers a vivid meeting point between travel history, graphic design and collecting.
These small printed objects deserve a closer look, not simply as nostalgic decorations, but as evidence of how hotels and destinations presented themselves to the world.
Hôtel dell’Europa, Catania: a hotel portrait set within a colourful vision of Sicily, with Mount Etna and sailing boats.
Where did hotel luggage labels begin?
There is no securely established first hotel luggage label. The history is less a single invention than a gradual emergence from hotel stationery, illustrated trade cards and the growing appetite for travel souvenirs.
Collector and researcher João-Manuel Mimoso describes nineteenth-century travellers cutting hotel images from letterheads and other printed materials to make pasteable souvenirs. Such objects blur the boundary between an improvised keepsake and a purpose-made label.
One particularly early example in his collection advertises the Grand Hotel de Dunkerque in Brussels. Mimoso dates it to between 1873 and 1877 using the hotel’s history. It is a useful documented example, rather than proof of a worldwide first. By the 1880s, he records hotel labels in use across several European countries.
An advertisement, a souvenir and a record of travel
Decorative hotel labels should be distinguished from functional baggage labels used to identify luggage or direct its transport. Both belong to travel history, but they did not necessarily serve the same purpose.
The illustrated hotel label promoted an establishment. Staff, including bellhops, applied labels to guests’ trunks and suitcases, carrying the hotel’s identity beyond its entrance. For travellers, the same label could preserve the memory of a stay and make a journey visible to others.
A labelled trunk could therefore be read almost like a travel diary. Yet labels are not infallible proof of an itinerary: they could also be collected separately, exchanged and preserved without ever being attached to luggage.
Joia Hotel, São Paulo: a uniformed attendant gives the hotel an immediately recognisable human face.
Small works of graphic art
A successful label had little space in which to work. Lettering had to identify a hotel or destination quickly, while an image suggested the experience awaiting the visitor: mountain air, seaside leisure, metropolitan elegance or an impressive building.
Grand Hotel, Tripoli: a camel-riding traveller, a guide and palm foliage turn the hotel label into a miniature travel scene.
The partnership between artist Mario Borgoni and the Naples printer Richter & Co is an important chapter in this story. Mimoso’s research describes Borgoni becoming the firm’s artistic director around 1906 and helping establish a highly influential approach to hotel graphics.
Other documented names in the field include Dan Sweeney, Jan Lavies and Erik Nitsche, whose work is represented in the University of Toronto’s luggage-label collection. Printers such as Richter, Trüb and Brügger also form part of its holdings.
Attribution requires care. A printer’s name identifies a producer, not automatically the designer. A resemblance to a famous artist’s style is a starting point for research, not a signature.
Carlton Hôtel, Lucerne: layered silhouettes and a glowing sky create a sense of place. The printer’s credit, A. Trüb & Cie, Aarau, appears along the lower edge.
A Hungarian perspective
Hungarian examples offer more than a regional footnote. They let us compare the visual identities of a capital-city hotel, a lakeside resort and a provincial grand hotel within the same collecting field.
The Központi Szálloda label from Budapest combines an elaborate architectural view with bold bands of lettering. Its multilingual wording addresses an international audience, while the small Czettel és Deutsch credit makes the printer part of the object’s story.
Központi Szálloda / Hotel Central, Budapest: multilingual lettering surrounds a detailed architectural scene.
The Hotel Balaton label from Siófok takes a different approach: sailing, vivid colour and leisure figures make the destination’s appeal immediately visible. The Grand Hotel Kovács label from Szombathely centres its identity on the hotel building, enclosed by a strong red circular border.
Hotel Balaton, Siófok: sailing boats, beach umbrellas and bright colours present lakeside leisure in miniature.
Grand Hotel Kovács, Szombathely: a bold circular border frames the hotel’s architectural portrait.
These contrasts provide an inviting route into Hungary’s wider history of travel graphics. As a documented example of that broader world, the National Széchényi Library catalogues Gitta Mallász’s Hongrie tourism poster, dated approximately 1931, as printed by Klösz in Budapest. It establishes a specific artist–printer connection in tourism advertising, but should not be treated as proof that Mallász designed any of the labels discussed here.
The collectors who preserved the labels
Gaston-Louis Vuitton’s collection is among the best-known examples. Francisca Mattéoli’s book World Tour: Vintage Hotel Labels from the Collection of Gaston-Louis Vuitton brought this material to a wider readership. It is better described as a celebrated collection than declared the largest without a defined comparison.
Graphic designer Tom Schifanella has also helped introduce the subject to new audiences through his Art of the Luggage Label project. A 2013 profile described his approach to collecting and sharing images as a resource for fellow enthusiasts.
There is a Hungarian connection here too: The Razso Collection presents Italian hotel luggage labels collected by György Rázsó.
Institutional collections matter alongside private ones. The University of Toronto’s finding aid records 3,449 labels collected by Jane Goodrich over a period of 25 years. Such holdings allow labels to be studied as historical documents as well as admired individually.
Rarity: what deserves a closer look?
An unfamiliar label is an invitation to investigate, not automatic evidence of rarity. Useful questions include whether the design exists in several editions, whether a printer or artist is identified, and whether a hotel name or address helps narrow its date.
Condition and completeness also affect how much information survives. A trimmed edge may remove a printer’s credit; an intact reverse may retain evidence worth recording. A famous hotel or transport company name alone does not establish a label’s date, authenticity or value.
For collectors, the rewarding details are often the smallest: an alternative spelling, a changed hotel name, a monogram, or a printing variation that becomes apparent only when two examples are compared.
Park-Hotel, Badenweiler: the small inscription along the lower margin is a reminder to preserve the details as well as the main design.
Did hotel labels contain a secret code?
One of the most entertaining stories concerns the position of a label on a trunk. Supposedly, hotel staff used placement to tell colleagues whether a guest tipped generously.
The story was already in circulation in 1910. On 27 June that year, The New York Times published an account headed “Code in Labels of Foreign Hotels,” reporting a traveller’s claimed discovery of such a system.
This is evidence of a contemporary story, not confirmation of a universal code. Presented with that distinction, it remains a fascinating glimpse of the anxieties and folklore surrounding hotel travel.
Decorating with labels without sacrificing the originals
Reproductions make it possible to enjoy these designs in everyday spaces while keeping the original objects safe. A framed arrangement can follow a theme: Alpine hotels, Italian cities, seaside resorts or destinations from a personal journey.
Copies can also be used for decoupage on boxes, travel-themed gift tags, bookmarks or decorative panels. Cutting, gluing, laminating and varnishing are projects for reproductions, not original collectible labels.
For valuable originals, careful storage is preferable to permanent display. The Library of Congress notes that light exposure can cause irreversible damage to paper and recommends well-made reproductions as the best alternative for long-term display. Where an original is framed, preservation-quality materials and suitable mounting methods are important.
A world of travel, preserved on paper
The lasting appeal of luggage labels lies in their scale. They compress architecture, landscape, typography and aspiration into a few square inches. Some celebrate a building; others sell an atmosphere. Together, they show how travel was imagined, advertised and remembered.
Looking closely at a label means noticing more than its destination. The lettering, border, printer’s line and signs of use can each open another part of the story. What began as a small piece of promotional paper can become a surprisingly rich historical object.
Sources and further reading
João-Manuel Mimoso: A Short History of Hotel Luggage Labels; Richter & Co; Francisca Mattéoli, World Tour: Vintage Hotel Labels from the Collection of Gaston-Louis Vuitton (2013); University of Toronto: Collection of Luggage Labels; The Razso Collection; The Art of the Luggage Label (2013); National Széchényi Library: Gitta Mallász, Hongrie; The New York Times, 27 June 1910; Library of Congress: Preservation Guidelines for Matting and Framing.