The Battle for the Summer Road Trip Customer Is Heating Up

AAA projected a record 39.1 million Americans on the road for Memorial Day weekend. Gas at the time averaged $4.56 a gallon nationally — the highest price at the pump since 2022. Summer driving season is well underway, and those two numbers are pulling in opposite directions.

Travelers are adapting to inflationary concerns by compressing their trips and tightening their spending at every stop. A Talker Research survey of 2,000 Americans found that 58% plan to spend less on travel this year, with budgets down 23% on average. Forty-seven percent are planning shorter getaways than last year and 53% are favoring two-to-three-day trips over long-distance drives, choosing destinations they can reach on a single tank of gas.

The American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI^®) Travel Study 2026 captured travel industries in what may be their most stable year since the pandemic. Airlines improved 3% to a score of 76 (on a scale of 0 to 100). Lodging, car rentals, rideshare, and online travel agencies also all posted gains. The service experience recovery, by most measures, has arrived.

How travelers behave inside that recovery, like where to fill up their tanks, where to “call it a night,” where to grab a bite, and more, will shape what happens across every industry doing business along the highway this summer.

The meal at the off-ramp

Forty-two percent of cost-conscious travelers say dining out is the first expense they reduce, according to the same Talker Research Study. Another 34% are packing their own food instead of stopping to eat.

That pressure lands directly on the fast food chains and convenience stores clustered at highway exits, and ACSI satisfaction data across both industries shows how differently travelers experience those options.

The ACSI Convenience Store Study 2025 saw Kwik Trip take the industry lead after surging 8% to a score of 84, driven by a food-focused model and a culture built around customer experience. Wawa and Sheetz tied at 82. At the bottom, ampm scored 73. Cooked food quality scored 80 across the industry, and the study noted that convenience stores have established themselves as a legitimate competitor in the food service landscape, whether for a commuter grabbing breakfast or a road tripper looking for something quick at an exit ramp.

The ACSI Restaurant and Food Delivery Study 2025 presented the other side of that dynamic: Quick-service restaurants (QSRs) held steady at 79, while full-service restaurants slid 2% to 82. And yet, U.S. chain restaurant sales grew 3.1% in 2024 against 4.1% menu-price inflation. Prices went up. Customer traffic went down.

Chick-fil-A has led QSRs for 11 consecutive years scoring 83, while McDonald’s sat last among reported brands at 70 — a 13-point gap between two options a traveler might see from the same off-ramp.

Satisfaction also varies by how customers interact with the restaurant. Dine-in restaurant satisfaction scored 83. Carry-out dropped to 79. Delivery fell to 74. Road trip meals happen almost entirely through drive-through windows and carry-out counters, formats where restaurant satisfaction runs lowest. A convenience store offering a hot meal at a lower price and a comparable satisfaction score is making that comparison sharper with every summer mile driven.

Decisions made from the passenger seat

The competition between convenience stores and restaurants is increasingly playing out on a phone screen somewhere between exits.

The Convenience Store Study found that 34% of convenience store customers have used a store’s mobile app, climbing to 60% among loyalty rewards members. App quality scored 84, reliability 82, and mobile order pickup effectiveness 82 — all improving 3%-4% year over year.

Rewards members scored 79 in overall satisfaction versus 74 for nonmembers and visited their stores at least weekly at a rate of 64% compared to 45%. QSRs are running a similar playbook. The Restaurant Study measured QSR mobile app quality at 85 and app reliability at 84, the highest-scoring elements of the quick-service customer experience.

PwC’s Summer Spending poll found that Gen Z (49%) and millennials (43%) are the age groups most likely to travel this summer, and they are also the most active users of loyalty apps and deal-comparison tools.

A rewards notification with a meal deal pushed before the exit, a mobile order placed from the passenger seat and ready when the family walks in, a fuel discount stacked on a food purchase. These micro-interactions are where road trip spending decisions happen in real time. The five-point satisfaction gap between rewards members and nonmembers in the convenience store data suggests those digital touchpoints are shaping how travelers feel about the entire stop.

Where the trip ends for the night

The same calculus follows travelers from the gas pump to the hotel lobby.

ACSI’s latest Travel Study measured lodging at 77 overall, with Airbnb and Hilton sharing the top spot at 79 and Wyndham finishing last at 70. The nine-point spread within lodging follows the same pattern as convenience stores (11 points between Kwik Trip and ampm) and restaurants (13 points between Chick-fil-A and McDonald’s) — wide gaps within every category, giving travelers a measurably different experience depending on where they stop.

Business traveler satisfaction rose 3% year over year, according to the same study, outpacing leisure gains. Road-tripping families and weekend getaway travelers are encountering a less consistent experience, and they are responding by simplifying their decisions. For instance, 21% are skipping hotels altogether by staying with friends or family.

Shorter trips are also removing lodging from the equation entirely. A family choosing a regional destination three hours away instead of a beach ten hours down the coast may turn what would have been a two-night trip into a single long day with no overnight stay. The U.S. Travel Association projects that the shift toward regional drive markets will hold through the summer. Every industry along the route — from gas stations to convenience stores to hotels — is operating in that compressed environment.

The road trip as a satisfaction stress test

A summer road trip compresses dozens of consumer decisions into a few hours. Where to fill up, where to eat, where to sleep, which app to open, which exit to take.

This summer’s travelers have both the budget pressure and the digital tools to act on those differences in real time.

For the brands and industries that serve road trippers, the implications are worth paying attention to. Travelers are choosing shorter trips, packing their own food, comparing prices between exits, and making loyalty decisions at the speed of a rewards notification. Understanding what drives satisfaction at every touchpoint is how these industries can meet a customer who is spending deliberately and remembering every stop that either earned or wasted their money.

Explore ACSI’s research across travel, convenience stores, restaurants (2026 study coming soon!), and more to see what’s driving satisfaction this summer — and where the opportunities are.