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Really depends on how much you'll use it and where you'll be traveling. The Tricos and Serfas and so on all leave you with a big bulky case to store (or worse, to carry in a vehicle). Life is too short for the most part, above all in Europe.
The padded soft cases will fold up and be a lot more usable in most instances. You have to trust in them, but I regularly travel with both a road and a track bike and put the road bike in a soft case and I've never had any damage -- that's after perhaps a hundred fifty trips. They fit in cars better even with the bike still packed up, and in a tiny European hotel room they don't take up all your floor space.
The third option is a high quality cardboard box. If you only travel once or twice a year, definitely plan on a cardboard box. My favorites are CoMotion, followed by Santa Cruz, then BMC, then just a grab bag of better boxes when I sort through the ones coming out of the shop at a local shop. Definitely get boxes for the better pro bikes -- they're made better and have a little more room. And give the guy building the bikes a sixpack of beer in exchange for not cutting the boxes open -- ask him to pull the boxes open and not cut up the bottom. I've taken team bikes through five or six stops in a good quality cardboard box and they've done fine. Reinforce the box on the inside with collapsed USPS Priority flat rate boxes taped to the main box. That doesn't take any room but gives you tremendous protection wherever you need it most. And get some nice foam (like a 2 inch thick strip that's fairly dense) to line the bottom of the box and the ends with. Then all you have to worry about are the sides. Last, the best protection from scratching and damage is to enclose the frame by itself in a super-heavy-duty polyethylene bag. Bikes often come shipped in them; otherwise use one of the heaviest-duty Hefty lawn waste bags. Remove quick releases/throughaxles, the chain, derailleur, and the crankset. Don't detach the cable on the derailleur; just wrap it up and tape it to the chain stay. Remove the crankset so the bike can rest on its bottom bracket and so it's easy to wrap. You'll work out the small bits right away. Do the same kind of customizing with the soft cases as well.
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