What you already know: travel eSIM is a big deal. GSMA Intelligence says (2026 figures) that global eSIM smartphone penetration reached 5% at the end of 2025 and is expected to reach 10% by the end of 2026—and by 2030, eSIM smartphone connections are forecast to finally outnumber those using traditional removable SIMs.
The same industry source points out that travel is already playing an important role in that adoption, with 12% of people who’d travelled internationally in the previous 12 months having used eSIM while abroad. Meanwhile, CCS Insight forecasts that travel eSIM provisions will quadruple by 2030, with the market reaching a value of $4.4 billion.
For MVNOs, these figures point to a market that is moving rapidly from niche opportunity towards an important part of the connectivity landscape. But there’s nothing that new in forecasts of travel eSIM getting big… which brings us to something you may not know, or at least haven’t been thinking about enough, when it comes to this opportunity:
The traveller is not just one type of customer—which means the opportunity can’t be adequately captured by a vanilla, undifferentiated offer.
Different sorts of ‘travel’ really do demand different sorts of ‘eSIM’
This is somewhat obvious if you think about it. While a lot of people outside their own countries want reliable, high-quality data to access cloud applications, video calls and business systems, the levels, duration and motivations for doing so are starting to vary significantly.
After all, a customer taking a three-day city break has very different connectivity needs from someone spending three weeks travelling across several countries: a subscriber heading to Spain for a long weekend and another travelling around Europe for three weeks will want different things, e.g., one might need a modest amount of data for maps, messaging and social media, while the other could require substantially more data across several destinations.
The growing trend of using excellent comms to allow me as a remote worker to do my work in some beautiful resort for a week on a ‘workcation’ necessitates different connectivity requirements again; the world’s now estimated 40 million digital nomads have yet other needs.
For MVNOs, this creates, for sure, a chance to sell excellent monetisable services. But the real prize is to see how eSIM makes it possible to build connectivity around the journey, rather than forcing the journey to fit a standard mobile package.
For example, for business travellers, reliability and data quality can matter considerably more than simply having the cheapest available package. Conversely, international students might be more than happy with the reassurance of knowing they will be able to rely on connectivity as soon as they rock up to their new temporary city home, and so on.
The Mobile Cloud difference
So, we need to accept that ‘travel’ is not a single use case in mobile anymore. For MVNOs, the mission now must be how quickly we can market an offer that matches a particular customer's needs?
At the point of me looking to buy a package, that could mean an all-inclusive price for a particular region, a country-specific offer, or a data-only package for customers who simply need internet access.
Duration is another important variable. A customer travelling for one week should not necessarily have to purchase a 30-day product; being able to offer one-week, two-week or other limited-period packages allows you as an operator to align the proposition more closely with the customer's actual journey.
For wholesale MNO teams supporting MVNOs, the ability to enable them to create these propositions quickly can become a significant competitive advantage, boosting the chance of success for your partners.
This is where flexible eSIM technology can make a real difference. A platform such as Mobile Cloud from Digitalk can enable the rapid creation of custom packages, allowing operators and their MVNO partners to respond to different travel requirements without having to build every proposition from scratch. You can, essentially, create different propositions for different traveller personas and use cases.
Mobile Cloud users can quickly spin up everything from nice travel eSIM all-inclusive and specific-country or regional packages, as well as attractive data-only offers, with defined periods such as one or two weeks.
That’s flexibility that’s going to give you a very adaptable wholesale proposition that allows MVNOs to differentiate themselves in a crowded market. Don’t forget that operators need visibility and control to ensure that the connectivity being sold delivers an experience that matches the expectations created by the package.
For MVNOs, that can be particularly important when their brand and customer relationship are at stake. They may not own the underlying network, but customers will still judge them on the quality of the service.
From generic to niche = from standard to profitable?
Digitalk Mobile Cloud gives MNOs another way to strengthen their wholesale relationships, as, instead of simply providing network access, you can now provide the flexibility all your MVNO partners need to develop new products and target specific customer segments.
In other words, use Mobile Cloud to stop selling travel eSIM as a generic solution, but move to being able to sell the precise connectivity package the traveller needs and that MVNOs want to offer to their chosen niches and segments.
We might put it like this: in travel, flexibility is convenient—but for MVNOs, it can also be a competitive advantage.
So if you don’t have the flexibility to create differentiated eSIM offers, we should talk. Let’s connect today and start building the unique set of travel eSIM ideas your market could end up loving.
