Samsonite sells more luggage than anyone — three brands, $3.6B in revenue, roughly a fifth of the global market. New 5W research finds the AI engines hand the recommendation to the direct-to-consumer challengers, and ranks the 25 brands by how often each is named.
Source: 5W analysis of AI-generated responses across ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews, Q2 2026. Share represents the estimated proportion of brand citations across 60+ tracked consumer prompts spanning carry-on and cabin bags, checked and large luggage, premium and luxury, value and everyday, durability and warranty, and design and lifestyle. Remaining ~23.7% split across ranks 16–25 and unranked brands.
Samsonite is the largest luggage company on earth — roughly $3.6B in revenue, about a fifth of the global market, and a portfolio that spans Samsonite, Tumi, and American Tourister. The 5W AI Visibility Index finds that Samsonite ranks second in AI citation share. The brand above it, Away, was founded in 2015.
The reason is the channel. Samsonite's scale was built on airport stores, department-store concessions, and decades of wholesale distribution — a presence that sells enormous volume and generates almost nothing an AI engine can retrieve. Away was built the opposite way: a direct-to-consumer brand that turned the carry-on into a cultural object, reviewed by every travel and product outlet and argued over in every packing thread. That is the material the models read.
And the category has a gateway query. The luggage decision, for most buyers, begins with "best carry-on" — and Away built its entire brand on that exact question. Own the carry-on and the engine carries the brand into adjacent answers; own the checked-bag aisle of an airport and the engine never sees you. The DTC challengers own the surface; the legacy giant owns the shelf.
"Samsonite has sold luggage for over a century and sells more of it than anyone alive. Ask an AI engine what suitcase to buy and it hands you Away — a brand barely ten years old. The gap is not quality. It is channel. Samsonite's scale lives in airports and department stores, where the engines cannot see it. Away's scale lives in reviews, in travel media, in the packing threads — which is exactly what the engines read. The carry-on is the question that opens the category, and a startup owns it. Own the question, or watch a younger brand answer it for you."
5W analyzed more than 60 common consumer prompts across six primary sub-categories of the luggage market, running each prompt five times per engine in clean sessions. We identified which brands AI models consistently surface, which sources feed those citations, and how the answer changes with the use case in the query.
Away, Monos, July, Béis — the bags that anchor the category's gateway query.
Samsonite, Travelpro, Briggs & Riley, Delsey.
Rimowa, Tumi, Briggs & Riley, Bric's.
American Tourister, Calpak, Level8, It Luggage.
Briggs & Riley, Travelpro, Samsonite.
Away, Béis, Paravel, Arlo Skye.
Query types tracked. Real-world prompts including "best luggage," "best carry-on luggage," "best checked bag," "best luggage brands," "Away vs Monos," "most durable luggage," "best luggage for frequent travelers," and 50+ variations covering recommendation, comparison, and category-leadership intent.
Citation sources tracked. Travel and product-review media, consumer testing outlets, lifestyle and shopping editorial, community forums and packing threads, and brand-owned content.
| # | Brand | Category | AI Visibility | Notable |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Away | DTC / carry-on | Category-dominant | Founded 2015; turned the carry-on into a cultural object and owns the gateway query for the category. |
| 2 | Samsonite | Legacy / full-range | Legacy leader | The largest luggage company in the world by revenue and market share; scale built on airport and wholesale distribution. |
| 3 | Tumi | Premium / business | Premium leader | Owned by Samsonite; the default citation for business and premium travel luggage. |
| 4 | Monos | DTC / minimalist | DTC co-leader | Canadian direct-to-consumer brand; minimalist hardside design heavily cited in carry-on comparisons. |
| 5 | Béis | DTC / lifestyle | Lifestyle leader | Shay Mitchell-founded; a social-first lifestyle brand cited across travel-bag and weekender queries. |
| 6 | Rimowa | Luxury / aluminum | Luxury tier | LVMH-owned; aluminum and premium polycarbonate cases; the default luxury luggage citation. |
| 7 | Travelpro | Crew / frequent-flyer | Frequent-flyer niche | Founded by a pilot; cited as the crew and frequent-traveler choice for durability and rollability. |
| 8 | July | DTC / hardside | DTC niche | Australian direct-to-consumer brand; hardside cases cited in design-led carry-on comparisons. |
| 9 | Briggs & Riley | Premium / warranty | Warranty leader | Privately held; lifetime "simple as that" guarantee; owns the durability and warranty citation. |
| 10 | Calpak | DTC / value-design | Value-design niche | Direct-to-consumer brand; design-forward luggage at accessible prices; cited in value carry-on queries. |
| 11 | American Tourister | Value / mass | Value niche | Owned by Samsonite; the mass-market value brand; cited in budget and family-luggage queries. |
| 12 | Delsey | Mid-range / French | Mid-range niche | French heritage maker; mid-range hardside and softside cases; a steady but thinner citation footprint. |
| 13 | Paravel | DTC / sustainable | Sustainable niche | Direct-to-consumer brand; recycled-material construction; owns much of the sustainable-luggage citation. |
| 14 | Level8 | DTC / value-hardside | Value-hardside niche | Direct-to-consumer brand; value hardside cases; cited in budget and first-suitcase comparisons. |
| 15 | Antler | Heritage / British | Heritage niche | British heritage brand; lightweight cases; cited more strongly in UK-market queries. |
| 16 | Bric's | Luxury / Italian | Luxury-niche | Italian family-owned maker; leather-trimmed premium luggage; cited in luxury and design queries. |
| 17 | Roam | DTC / customizable | Customization niche | Direct-to-consumer brand; made-to-order customizable cases; cited by design-led buyers. |
| 18 | Arlo Skye | DTC / premium | Premium-DTC niche | Direct-to-consumer brand; aluminum and polycarbonate cases positioned as a design alternative. |
| 19 | Eagle Creek | Travel gear / packing | Packing niche | Cited heavily in packing-cube and travel-organization queries adjacent to core luggage. |
| 20 | Osprey | Travel backpacks | Backpack niche | Cited as the travel-backpack and carry-on-pack answer for one-bag and adventure travel. |
| 21 | It Luggage | Value / lightweight | Budget niche | Value brand known for ultra-light cases; cited at the budget boundary of the category. |
| 22 | Travelon | Anti-theft / accessories | Security niche | Cited in anti-theft bag and travel-security queries rather than core suitcase comparisons. |
| 23 | Cotopaxi | Adventure / duffels | Adventure niche | Cited for colorful travel duffels and adventure bags; a lifestyle-adjacent presence. |
| 24 | Patagonia | Outdoor / duffels | Duffel niche | Cited for travel duffels and gear bags; an outdoor brand at the edge of the luggage category. |
| 25 | Peak Design | Travel bags / camera | Specialist niche | Cited for travel and camera bags by photographers and one-bag travelers. |
Away built its brand on a single product and a single question: the best carry-on. A decade of travel-media coverage and review-economy presence made it the gateway answer — and the engine that names Away for the carry-on carries it into the category's adjacent queries.
Tumi did not need the carry-on. Decades of association with business and premium travel gave the engines a clear, repeatable reason to name it whenever the query turns to executive or high-end luggage.
Briggs & Riley attached itself to one word — durability — and one promise: a lifetime guarantee. Ask an engine for the most durable or longest-lasting luggage and the brand surfaces well above its size.
Monos took "minimalist" and Béis took "lifestyle." Each gave the engines a distinct, repeatable position rather than competing head-on with the default — and each now owns a slice of the answer.
Samsonite leads the world in luggage revenue, but its scale lives in airport stores and wholesale shelves the engines cannot read. A century of distribution does not translate into a citation footprint.
Long-standing makers without a defining product or a sharp position blur together in AI answers. The engines retrieve the brand with a clear story and skip the rest of the tier.
Budget luggage that competes only on price has nothing for an engine to attach a recommendation to. "Cheap" alone is a thin and crowded citation lane.
Brands that sell mainly through retailers and rarely through their own channel generate little first-party content and few direct reviews — and underindex against their physical presence.
Away, Monos, and Béis — built in the review economy — lead the citation surface over the legacy makers.
The category's AI answer is won at "best carry-on" — the question most buyers ask first.
Airport and department-store distribution sells volume but generates nothing the engines retrieve.
A single recognizable case gives the engines a durable reason to cite the whole brand.
"Durable," "luxury," "minimalist," "sustainable" each route to the brand that claimed them.
Product-testing outlets and travel editorial feed luggage citations disproportionately.
Sustained global travel growth keeps "best luggage" a high-frequency query the engines refresh often.
Recycled-material construction is increasingly part of how the engines describe and rank cases.
Trackers and charging are cited where allowed, but airline rules keep the framing cautious.
New direct-to-consumer entrants keep adding reviewed challengers the engines can retrieve.
Lifetime-guarantee language is increasingly surfaced in durability and value queries.
Travel backpacks and carry-on packs are forming a distinct, fast-growing citation lane.
For a century, luggage was bought the way it was sold — off an airport shelf, in a department store, under a name a traveler already knew. That still happens. But a growing share of buyers now begin with a question typed into an AI engine, and the answer they receive frames the consideration set before they reach any store.
The Index shows what that surface rewards: a defining product, a deep record of independent reviews, and a clear position relative to the category's gateway query. Samsonite's scale was built in a channel the engines cannot see. Away's was built in exactly the one they read.
AI citation share is the scoreboard. In luggage, the brand AI names is the brand the review economy made the answer — not the brand with the most shelf space.