Book a flight, get upsold a SIM: the new travel bundle nobody asked for

On June 2, Orange announced a global distribution deal that places its Orange Travel eSIM inside Trip.com, one of the world's largest online travel agencies. Trip.com users can buy data packages for France, Italy, Spain, the UK and Switzerland while booking the rest of the trip, pay in their local currency, and activate the eSIM on arrival. 

Orange Travel is an Orange Group subsidiary, and the two say they're targeting key European tourist markets, catching travelers at the point of booking as roaming demand grows. It's a small feature with a big signal: whoever sells you the flight or hotel now wants to sell you the data too.

A pattern, not a one-off

The examples are stacking up fast. 

• LATAM Airlines launched "eSIM LATAM" in July 2025 - the first Latin American carrier with its own branded eSIM, offering 1–10GB plans bought straight from its site, with LATAM Pass miles earned on each purchase.
  
• Vodafone runs a football-themed "Champions Travel" eSIM across 200-plus countries, tied to its UEFA sponsorship.
  
• Experiences platform Klook sells eSIMs alongside tours.
  
• Airbnb is rebuilding itself into an all-in-one travel app (boutique hotels, car rental, grocery delivery, airport pickups) exactly the kind of platform that bolts on connectivity next.

The engine nobody sees: "Stripe for telecom"

Most of these brands aren't building networks. They're plugging into embedded-connectivity platforms, chiefly Gigs, which describes itself as doing for telecom what Stripe did for payments. Gigs already powers branded mobile and eSIM products for Revolut, Nubank, Klarna, OnePay, Sezzle and LATAM, and in September 2025 struck a partnership with AT&T, the largest network in North America.  

The model is simple: Gigs handles the licences, networks and billing through one API, so a brand can ship an eSIM in weeks rather than years, and rivals like Telnyx sell the same white-label pipes. The friction they're buying into is real, Klarna's own research found half of Americans think switching phone plans is too hard.

Revolut shows why they bother. It added eSIMs in 2024, and they quickly became its most-used non-financial product, with customers creating millions of data plans across 100-plus countries. In January 2026 it went further, launching full Revolut Mobile in the UK, unlimited 5G plus a 20GB EU/US roaming allowance for an introductory £12.50 a month. 

Why brands are piling in

The market is exploding: travel eSIM use is forecast to jump from about 70 million plans in 2024 to more than 280 million by 2030. For a brand with a captive audience, it's high-margin, repeat-purchase revenue that also deepens loyalty. 

The pain it solves is concrete, too: international roaming on major US carriers still runs around $10 a day, so a week in Europe can cost roughly $70 before you use a single megabyte. As one platform executive put it, people turn off airplane mode before they unbuckle their seatbelt, connectivity is now core to the trip, and everyone wants a cut.

Convenient, but read the fine print

Buying data in the same checkout as your flight is genuinely easy. The trade-offs are quieter. Bundled plans aren't automatically the cheapest, and a brand with your loyalty already has little pressure to undercut specialists. 

Loyalty hooks (miles, points) can steer you toward a worse-value plan. And coverage varies, because most of these resellers ride the same wholesale networks underneath - the logo on the box is not the network in your phone.

It's the same reseller model that has quietly powered global travel data for years, the kind of permanent-roaming setup I've written about before now just wearing a brand you already trust.

So is it actually a good deal?

This is where it pays to know the going rate, because dedicated travel eSIMs are cheap and easy to price-check. A booking-time bundle has to beat that to be worth it, and often it can't, because the brand selling it already has your attention and your loyalty points, so there's little pressure to compete on price. 

The math takes two minutes - note the data, the countries and the price in the checkout, then run the same trip through a specialist. I tested Holafly hands-on across several cities and rural stretches and made it my top pick for 2026, that's the benchmark a bundled plan needs to clear. 

If you’re new to any of this, our guide to what an eSIM is walks through activation, coverage and top-ups before you spend a cent. 

There's one trap bundled plans rarely flag: refunds. Buyers who activate on an unsupported phone routinely get nothing back, so confirm your device supports eSIM before you pay anyone. And check the network underneath, a familiar logo at checkout often rides the same wholesale carrier a $5 specialist plan uses.