PCGG Day Four: Hotel Retro

Our second pick today in The 2026 PopCult Gift Guide is an artbook that straddles a few different areas of interest and would be a great gift for fans of travel, history, retro art and stickers.

Hotel Retro: Vintage Luggage Labels from Tokyo to Buenos Aires (330 Travel Ephemera Stickers)
by Letterform Archive
ISBN 979-8-9891423-2-3
$40 from The Publisher, or discounted at Amazon 

Hotel Retro: Vintage Luggage Labels from Tokyo to Buenos Aires takes you on a trip around the world during the golden age of travel. Back in the day, the classy hotels all around the world would give out stickers for travellers to slap on their luggage as a memento of where they’d been.

Plus, it was also free advertising.

And it’s really cool to look at.

Let me quote the publisher’s blurb:

Journey across time and place with hundreds of vibrant steamer trunk labels from the Golden Age of Travel, faithfully reproduced as 330 charming full-color stickers

In the late nineteenth century, as industrialization allowed for the emergence of the leisure class, an unprecedented number of world travelers began touring the globe via train and sea. From far-off destinations they brought home a curious collection: eye-catching labels bearing the insignia of grand hotels, pasted to their steamer trunks as souvenirs.

Today, these labels are also souvenirs of graphic design—from the opulence of art deco to the minimalism of Swiss Style. Featuring hundreds of delightful examples from the collection of Letterform Archive, Hotel Retro highlights the labels’ artistry in illustration, lettering, and typography, and restores them to their original adhesive use for the pleasure of a new generation.

This is a great book that isn’t a difficult read, but it can spur your imagination and whisk you off to a vacation in your mind on the Orient Express or around India’s Golden Triangle, or on the Trans-Siberian Railway. You can check into the the grand historic hotels without leaving the comfort of your home, and if you are so inclined, remove the sticker from the book and put it on your suitcase.

Hotel Retro: Vintage Luggage Labels from Tokyo to Buenos Aires has 240 pages with 330 removable stickers depicting famous hotels from around the world.

Recommended as a gift for the traveller at a heart, romatic adventurer or fan of terrific graphic design. You can order Hotel Retro: Vintage Luggage Labels from Tokyo to Buenos Aires directly from the publisher, discounted from Amazon or from any bookseller by using the ISBN code.