Tech meets travel with this new Utah-based startup

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Bringit, a Utah-based startup, now offers luggage handling services at Salt Lake airport.
• The service allows travelers to deliver luggage to wherever the customer has selected, including their homes.
• Bringit aims to expand nationwide, partnering with airlines and hotels for broader reach.

SALT LAKE CITY — Innovation is adding convenience to many parts of daily life. In Salt Lake City, travel is becoming one of them.

Three Utahns recently launched a startup business, Bringit, to manage "luggage limbo" by handling baggage for travelers coming in and out of Salt Lake City International Airport.

Jenn Blackham, chief business officer and head of operations for Bringit, told the Deseret News the company provides convenience for all travelers who find themselves with "two hands, a lot of responsibility and a lot of bags."

Is travel the next industry to be revolutionized by modern technology? Blackham said Bringit might be proof.

"You pay for DoorDash. You pay for groceries. You pay for Amazon. Why should traveling be any different?"

What is Bringit?

Bringit is a privately owned business contracted with the Salt Lake City airport. They call themselves the DoorDash of luggage.

When travelers use Bringit, their bags are taken from airport baggage claim directly to their destination. Or, at the end of their stay, delivered straight from their hotel to the airport.

What does this mean for travelers? Their vacation time isn't spent hauling luggage. For business people headed straight to meetings, big families with several bags, elderly people with limited mobility or customers with late check-ins, their vacation time isn't spent "babysitting" their luggage.

Israel Arellano, Bringit founder, CEO and head of product, said in an era of technology that streamlines everyday tasks, a revolution in travel was inevitable. He listed innovations like automated cars and over-the-phone medical care, saying, "It's impossible to think that every single industry is evolving, but still every time we travel, we have to carry a big weight."

How does it work?

After receiving information from customers, Bringit carriers retrieve luggage from baggage claim. If travelers are handing off a carry-on, they meet the carrier at the airport's information desk.

Carriers deliver luggage to wherever the customer has selected — the front desk of a hotel or another secure location such as an Airbnb or the home of returning Utah customers.

Bringit also offers services to retrieve personal items from hotels, Airbnbs or other locations and meet travelers at the airport an hour before their departure to hand off luggage. This allows travelers to enjoy their last day of travel in Utah without carrying luggage from an early check-out.

Customers can also use Bringit storage lockers within the airport so that between flights they can explore the city without carrying their luggage with them. Travelers can store luggage for several days if needed.

It began with a conversation over coffee

Arellano came up with the idea for Bringit in Miami and launched a small-scale trial. Though the trial was successful, the COVID-19 pandemic crippled the travel industry, and the service never hit the ground.

In December 2024, Arellano reached out to Blackham, a good friend he knew from when they both lived in New York. Over conversation at a coffee shop in Utah, where both now live, he pitched the idea of working together to start Bringit up again.

Her first thought? "No, I can't. I don't know anything about travel."

But the idea stayed with her.

"I started thinking, and I was like, 'You know what? This could be really fun,'" Blackham said.

Blackham has experience in small businesses after launching MDL notebooks in 2023 and several years of consulting wellness startups. She recruited Lee, her sister, who has experience in marketing with Sinclair Oil.

Three months after the initial conversation, they pitched the idea of making Salt Lake City a "hands-free destination" to the Salt Lake City International Airport, and the airport agreed to a contract. Bringit officially launched in February of this year.

Their vision is to "literally transform the way we travel," Arellano told the Deseret News. "The moment you arrive to Salt Lake City, you can leave the airport hands-free."

Facing the obvious hurdle: Consumer trust

Blackham said that since launching in February, they have made updates like allowing travelers to register multiple bags at once and incorporating constant lines of communication between customers and carriers.

Most importantly, Bringit needs to build consumer trust.

"The biggest challenge right now is culture," Arellano said.

Arellano compared Bringit to companies like Uber or Airbnb. He said that though customers were hesitant at first to trust their travel or lodging to strangers, they adapted to the convenience.

"Yes, the first iteration is going to be, you know, kind of challenging," Arellano said. "But five years from now, it's going to be 'BAU' — business as usual."

Where does travel innovation go from here?

"You know what is fun? That we're working toward the future," Arellano said.

Arellano said Bringit is still in a "soft launch" stage while they solidify operations, technology, logistics, platform and growth. He expects the company to be fully operational within the next 60 days.

"Right now, it's like just putting our feet in the water, but the goal is to get five years from now and see a lot of people with no luggage in hand," Arellano said, adding that they already have plans to start operations in other airports across the country.

Next year, he hopes to makes Bringit a "B2B2C operation" — business to business to consumer — partnering with airlines and hotels to offer Bringit services as part of resort or airline packages. American Express has already talked of partnering to provide Bringit services to their customers traveling in New York, Arellano said.

The Salt Lake tourism industry is growing, and Blackham sees Bringit as a tool to support that growth.

"A growing city needs to have growing services," Blackham said. "It elevates the city and the customer experience from the minute they land to the minute they leave."

The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.

Related topics

Utah travel and tourismBusinessUtahSalt Lake County
Emily Walker