Easter doesn't just move people. It transforms where they stop. This year, over the four-day bank holiday weekend of 2–6 April, the UK's motorway service areas became some of the most valuable brand environments in the country. Here's what the data tells us.
5m
Total audience across the Easter weekend
+41.5%
Sales uplift on Good Friday and Easter Monday
+28%
Uplift in family vehicle visits over the bank holiday
The roads filled up. So did the service areas
The RAC recorded nearly 21 million Easter getaway trips planned for 2026, with planned leisure journeys rising for the second year running - making this the busiest Easter on the roads since 2022.
Across the four-day bank holiday weekend, motorway service areas recorded a total audience of five million visits. Despite fuel prices rising sharply in recent months, our data shows the vast majority of drivers didn't change their plans, with only 6% saying they'd drive shorter distances. This resilience signals that audiences remain in a spending frame of mind and that these aren't fleeting drive-by’s. MSA visitors arrive mid-journey, with time to pause, browse, and spend. And at Easter, they arrive in numbers that dwarf any typical April weekend. The surge starts well before the bank holiday itself. Thursday, 2 April, saw visits climb +21% above the baseline as families get ahead of the rush, loading up the car and heading out early. That energy carried straight through to Good Friday and didn't let up until Monday's return wave.
The family vehicle story
Perhaps the most striking finding from this year's data is just how dramatically family vehicles outperformed the broader audience. Across the four-day period, family vehicle visits were up +28% against the pre-holiday baseline. This group also contributed to the 21% uplift on Maundy Thursday traffic, with many visitors leaving on Thursday and peaking on Friday.
For brands that target families - whether in food and drink, entertainment, travel, or retail - Easter MSAs aren't just a contextual fit. They're a concentration of the exact audience that matters most, arriving in a mindset primed for spontaneous spending and seasonal indulgence.
Clients such as LEGO and The National Trust ran Easter-specific campaigns in order to leverage this increase in family audiences over the bank holiday. Paultons Park also tapped into this audience over the weekend to divert traffic to a local family attraction. By planning around specific calendar moments, such brands were able to target their campaign towards a large-scale, high-intent audience.
When they stop, they spend
The commercial picture is just as compelling with our EPOS data showing some unexpected results. Book sales grew by 91%, non-fizzy drinks by 46% and sweets by 39%. Overall sales across bank holiday Friday and Monday were up +41.5% on the March same-day baseline, with key category uplift confirming that Easter is as much a consumer behaviour shift as a travel one.
These purchases follow a clear rhythm: Thursday evening, Friday midday, and Monday afternoon are the three peak sales windows. A traveller who stops to stretch their legs, get a coffee, and pick something up for the kids is already in purchase mode. The right brand message at the right moment doesn't interrupt that journey: it fits perfectly inside it.
Relevance, not just reach
What Easter delivers at motorway service areas isn't just scale. It's context. Five million visits from audiences who are paused, present, and in a spending frame of mind. Families on their way to see relatives. Couples squeezing out a long weekend. Motorists who've earned a break and are ready for one.
That context is hard to replicate, but Easter arrives on schedule, and so does the audience. For brands that plan around it, that predictability is as valuable as the scale.
