Soft bags fold flat and are stored in your cabin or a crew store room. Hard suitcases are awkward — most operators ask you to bring soft luggage or leave the case at your hotel.
Storage is the practical reason every operator asks for soft-sided luggage
A duffel or foldable dive bag collapses flat and slides under the bunk or into a wardrobe. A rigid suitcase does not, and on a boat where every square metre is allocated, that is a genuine problem.
What operators do with hard cases varies: some have a store room or a space in the engine-room passage, some stack them in an unused cabin when the boat is not full, and some simply cannot take them. On smaller vessels the answer is often no.
If you must travel with a hard case — because of camera equipment, for example — the standard solution is to leave it at the hotel you stayed in before boarding. Almost every hotel in an embarkation city offers free left-luggage for guests returning after a charter, and it is worth confirming when you book the room.
Valuables on board: most cabins have a small safe or a lockable drawer for passports, cash and phones. Liveaboards are among the safest travel environments there are — you are with the same 20 people all week — but use the safe anyway, mostly to protect items from humidity and salt.
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