How Holiday Periods Like Easter Drive eSIM Adoption

After a relatively quiet couple of months, the global travel market is seeing a new spike in trade, driven in no small part by the Easter vacation period.

In the US, the 2025 Easter weekend overlaps with spring break, causing an additional rise in international travel numbers. In Europe, hotel occupancy rates over Easter see a noticeable uptick, particularly when compared to the preceding January-March off-season. While the benefits here are clear to the tourism and travel industry, recent developments in eSIM technology have made Easter an important date for a less obvious sector: telecommunications.

Passport, boarding pass, eSIM

Today, mobile internet is an essential travel resource – everything from checking into flights and navigating streets, to finding a restaurant and translating the menu, takes place online. Previously, travellers were faced with three less-than-ideal options:

1. Tracking down a public Wi-Fi network 

2. Using mobile data with their regular SIM and incurring steep roaming charges 

3.  Switching out their regular SIM with a local SIM card and losing access to all locally-stored SIM info, including contacts, messages, and some 2-factor authentication services.

Travel eSIMs are temporary SIM profiles, often prepaid, that directly address these issues. Users download a travel eSIM for a specific destination and use it to get online without paying roaming fees or replacing their regular SIM.

Reports from 2024 found that travel eSIM users saved an average of 37% compared to regular data roaming customers when abroad.

As eSIMs continue to replace physical SIMs and the release of eSIM-only smartphones gathers pace, travel eSIMs are expected to more or less entirely replace local SIM cards as a way to get online abroad. Secondary advantages include ease of use, reliability, and improved security, with no risk of theft or loss.

The new eSIM providers

Increasingly, brands, startups and companies not typically associated with the travel and tourism space are beginning to recognize the value eSIMs bring to their customer basee and incorporate them within their products.

The neobank Revolut added 1GLOBAL travel eSIMs as an optional add-on in its app in the run-up to Easter 2024 – within a few weeks, over 200,000 customers had downloaded one. While this can’t all be accounted for by the time of year (in the year since, Revolut has continued to enjoy regular eSIM downloads), it does point to a wider trend: the Easter travel period offers a wealth of opportunities for a diverse range of tech and telco companies.

Leveraging holiday trends

In Europe and the Americas, Easter Weekend is one of the busiest times of year for international travel. This effect is regional, but it indicates how digital businesses can harness peak travel seasons to explore new opportunities.

By offering eSIM solutions during peak holiday periods, businesses can further capitalize on the increased travel activity. Examples include: 

• Easter: Tailor eSIM plans to popular destinations – for example the Balearic Islands, which have seen a surge in visitor numbers during Spring 2025.

• Summer Vacation: Provide continuous connectivity across multiple locations for travelers planning longer stays, serving the serving customers on extended breaks, homeswaps and digital nomad vacations. 

• Thanksgiving, Christmas and the holiday season: Offer multi-user packages for travelers visiting family and friends abroad. 

Easter travel: the numbers

For the travel and tourism sector, the Easter season is one of the “big three”, alongside late summer and the Christmas period.

The European short-haul airline Ryanair sees its prices spike across these three periods, accounting for surging demand. The Easter period also overlaps with other major celebrations. This year, Eid al-Fitr fell on March 31, while traditional getaway favourite Valentine’s Day often occurs during Lent. In the US, Easter weekend typically dovetails with Spring Break, causing a 5% increase in airport visitors.

An increase in international travel means an increase in eSIM usage, on top of the wider transition toward the technology. As it stands, travel eSIMs are on the cusp of mass adoption — travel eSIM usage is projected to grow by 50% year-on-year, including both business and private travellers. Increasing public awareness has been identified as a key requirement for the eSIM industry, though the ongoing manufacturer-led industry push towards eSIM adoption is expected to accelerate this process.

This presents digital businesses with an opportunity: getting ahead of the curve and differentiating their brand while preparing for the societal shift toward eSIMs.

With this opportunity, however, come some key caveats.

The challenges of incorporating eSIMs

Companies in the rapidly evolving tech space must continually explore opportunities to attract new customers and retain current ones. The increasing popularity of eSIM technology offers the chance for these brands to incorporate eSIM-based services, such as mobile data plans, into their product suite to grow revenue and improve customer retention. Using these services presents two significant obstacles:

1. Very few companies possess the expertise, infrastructure, and experience needed to develop in-house eSIM services.

2. Incorporating eSIM services from external providers can result in an inconsistent UX and an uneven customer journey.

3. Any solution must be scalable: to prepare for the projected expansion of the eSIM market, companies need an eSIM distribution service that will grow with their customer base.

These brands require a specialist partner like 1GLOBAL. The 1GLOBAL embedded telco service allows brands to utilize 1GLOBAL's leading eSIM distribution platform and worldwide network within their own products, apps and websites. The service is white label, providing a smooth user experience and consistent custom branding.

Why offer eSIMs?

For travel and non-travel brands alike, embedding an eSIM distribution service from 1GLOBAL offers several advantages: 

• A sustainable revenue source: Travel eSIMs are a service with high potential for repeat purchases - not only is the purchasing process immediate, but familiarity with the product incentivizes future purchases with the same provider.

• Boosted customer engagement: For digital platforms, offering a practical and cost-effective way for customers to get online boosts engagement with the platform – the easier it is for customers to access the internet, the easier it is for them to access an online service.

• An additional USP: An eSIM service is a genuinely valuable augmentation that helps customers save money while generating revenue. It’s a near-instant addition that immediately provides any digital service with a new USP.

• Simple integration: An eSIM distribution service like 1GLOBAL embedded telco is painless to integrate, with little technical knowledge or manual oversight required.

Who uses white label eSIMs?

The use cases of eSIMs are near-limitless – anyone with a recent smartphone who needs mobile internet access in a new country stands to benefit. As a result, eSIMs are no longer the sole purview of telecommunications providers: hotels, airports, retail stores, train operators, and even non-travel adjacent industries like banking and fintech have all seen increased interest in supplying and reselling of eSIMs.

While fintech companies like Revolut have already made strides in this area, other industries can also benefit from integrating eSIM solutions: 

• Network operators: Network providers can offer eSIMs as part of their international plans, enhancing their services for travelers.

• Travel Agencies: By offering eSIMs, travel agencies can provide a more comprehensive travel package, including connectivity solutions.

• Hospitality: Hotels and resorts can partner with eSIM providers to offer guests mobile connectivity during their stay.

How two different global brands use 1GLOBAL white label eSIM services

The diverse applications of embedded telco products by 1GLOBAL can be illustrated by comparing two different clients: Revolut and freenet. Both brands are successful multinational corporations with millions of active users. However, their UI, user base, and core product differ greatly. Here’s how they leverage 1GLOBAL white-labels eSIMs:

Revolut

Revolut is a digital-only neobank and app with over 40 million active users. In recent years, it has expanded its services from personal banking to a diversified digital finance platform, offering users in-app access to investing, crypto, and currency exchange services. Key to its success is the wide range of digital services contained in a single, user-friendly app.

By partnering with 1GLOBAL, they were able to further expand their product suite and offer their 40+ million customers an in-app data roaming service.

freenet

Germany’s largest MVNO, freenet is a digital-first telecommunications and TV supplier with 9.5 million unique users. Together with 1GLOBAL, freenet launched its own travel eSIM option, incorporated directly into its app.

What next?

App-based services tend to have digitally-native customer bases and early adopters of new tech, like eSIMs. Not only does an embedded eSIM solution provide a new feature, it also mitigates the risk of losing customers to brands who do.

Doing so now prepares digital platforms for the future of eSIM.

While global international travel numbers will settle down slightly after Easter, it won’t last long: 9 of the 10 busiest days of the year for US airports in 2024 were in June or July. Adopting an eSIM solution now allows digital services to serve this demand and diversify their digital offering.

Learn more about 1GLOBAL embedded telco solutions here.