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Published on:
July 27, 2026
Tags:
eSIM
Travel
UN Tourism did the research, and around 307 million tourists traveled internationally in the first quarter of 2026. That’s 6 million more than in the same period last year. And although the agency doesn’t specify destinations, it’s easy to imagine that they traveled across different roaming zones.
If you’re a brand in the travel space, this information is an added revenue opportunity. With a convenience-first mindset, your customers want their apps and chosen brands to be multi-purpose and offer various services, including connectivity. To capitalize on this, you will need to partner with a travel eSIM platform and tailor the data packages to their needs.
But is there actually any business sense to go in this direction? There is, and the article will explore the topic more in depth.
A travel eSIM platform is a set of tools developed by providers, covering analytics, line (eSIM) management, automations, and other functions. It usually comes with the partnership programs that businesses choose to save time and money.
The programs themselves concern white-label services offered by the provider. These range from webstores to API integrations or even affiliate programs. For reference, at esimba.ai, we offer 7 distinct partnership types, and you can read more about them by following the links below:
They are, and the number of active users is increasing. 2026 data indicates that eSIM adoption jumped to 28.1% from 19.0% in 2025. If we consider things on a regional scale, numbers differ drastically, e.g., 40% adoption in Oceania and just 21.8% in Europe. The main slowing factor is a general lack of awareness, as people are still not fully convinced that eSIMs solve all their connectivity issues.
That said, in travel communities, the reception has been more than warm. Lots of travelers highlight the following eSIM benefits:
A good argument for any kind of outsourcing is convenience. Provided your partner is reliable and has years of experience under their belt, they will be able to guide you through sales or just generally support you along the way. On establishing a business relationship, they extend their infrastructure to you and bring in a host of benefits.
The first one is, of course, carrier agreements. If you try to create your own infrastructure, you’ll soon find it to be a task and a half. A platform partner already has that coverage in place, often across 150+ countries, which means a travel company can get live storefronts in a record timeline.
Lots of travel agencies offer eSIM-adjacent services. They could sell connectivity during flight booking, bundle it in a package, and do all of it without spending a single dollar on customer acquisition. You simply offer eSIMs at your own markup to clients at the right conversion stage and create a nice secondary revenue source.
Selling eSIMs also involves customer support, activation, top-ups, refunds, and myriad other related issues. A travel eSIM platform absorbs this operational load and offers a way for you to quickly train your own support team or use your provider’s to quickly start providing good customer service.
Coverage gaps used to be a point of hesitation for businesses. That's largely solved now with eSIMs. A platform built on established MVNO infrastructure, like our esimba.ai, can offer broad country coverage immediately, rather than the business having to fill in gaps market by market as it grows.
But even with all the advantages in mind, sometimes it doesn’t make sense to establish a partnership. The exact reasoning depends on your particular situation, but tends to tie in with associated risks and cons.
eSIM reselling is profitable, but there’s some nuance to the numbers. Because of unit economics, each partner is incentivized to sell on scale. A business selling a handful of eSIMs a month through a travel eSIM platform is paying largely the same overhead as one selling thousands, so the markup only compounds into meaningful revenue once volume is there.
As soon as you establish a business relationship, your profits and overall infrastructure are tied to the partner’s. Although that applies to any partnership, it's a factor worth weighing regardless of which provider you consider working with. The more established the company, the lower the risk.
For a business that's already an MVNO, or one operating at a scale where carrier relationships are worth negotiating directly, building in-house can be the better economic call. The model exists to solve a problem that mostly affects businesses without existing telecom infrastructure or expertise. However, some travel eSIM platforms like esimba.ai offer zero-friction integration and can bring in any company you partner with.
To properly decide on which partner you want, start by considering overall business goals. If you’re in the early stages of developing customer loyalty, it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to sell that many eSIMs to justify the spend. In any other case, leveraging your client base is a sure pathway to sales success.
If you’ve already considered that, then you can reference the criteria we established here. Any travel eSIM platform you partner offers white-label services by default, so the same evaluation method applies here.
If you’re not sure how to leverage the client base, you can read our latest guide on how to sell eSIMs online. It covers establishing a pipeline and channel strategy and has tips from our sales team.
But if sales is something that you’ve already considered and you want to see a working model in action, meet our managed webstore partner Nikana.
Nikana is a direct accommodation platform in Greece with more than 3,000 properties across 160+ destinations. They operate on a lead-based model and have built strong direct guest traffic over the years. Nikana had already demonstrated stable portfolio growth before launching the product. The introduction of eSIM was intended to monetize existing guest traffic by adding a relevant travel-related digital service.
Nikana, like many other accommodation platforms, had to operate under:
These structural constraints created the rationale for launching a scalable ancillary product.
For Nikana, the goal was to introduce a digital ancillary product that:
To help them find a permanent solution, we decided to onboard them as a managed webstore partner. We created a subdomain, Nikana eSIM, that functions as an eSIM store. No changes were required to property operations, listing management, or core booking processes. All implementation stages were guided and supported by us at esimba.ai, and the entire process took just 10 days.
At the time of implementation, Nikana paid an upfront website charge of $1,000 (no longer required). But even with that in mind, the results were near-immediate. eSIM greatly complemented the booking services on offer and strengthened brand positioning. After 5 months (partnered in June 2025), Nikana achieved the following results:
Currently, they’re expanding into new regions of Greece and launching Croatia as a new destination. The eSIM model scales automatically with geography and remains a convenient tool for generating revenue for our partner.
The Nikana case proves everything mentioned above and, hopefully, indicates that esimba.ai is a convenient travel eSIM platform that offers real solutions to existing problems.
Our platform offers zero-friction integration, and you can keep existing eSIM provider commitments if they offer better rates. After signing up, you’ll gain access to analytics and automations and will be able to easily manage all eSIM lines. But even more than that, you’ll gain access to our entire product range, including the new Europe bundle Hercules that comes with a phone number.
No matter your business goals, esimba.ai can help you achieve them. Reach out to us today to learn more about the platform and maybe even get a demo from our team!
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As a global MVNO, esimba.ai, a subsidiary of Keepgo, provides you with the opportunity to offer your customers top-quality connectivity in 150+ countries.
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