Egencia vs. Upside Business Travel

Overall, Egencia is a good tool for my employees to use when I (or my work partner) aren't available to make the reservations. They can easily access their account and the charges will go on the corporate credit card. This makes it all around easy for the traveling employees.

Incentivized

I've used other big name solutions before, but Upside's customer service is really what puts them head and shoulders above the rest. I don't worry about getting someone who has no idea what they're doing when I call Upside - whoever I get is going to be able to answer my questions and get my issues sorted out. That's a huge help

Incentivized

• Egencia is an all-in-one booking tool so you can keep everything in once place.
• Egencia works with SAML, so it's easy for users to get set up and logged in.
• Egencia helps keep things in order by preventing bookings without the approval of managers. This can help keep costs low as well.

Incentivized

• Customer Support. Our business travel changes in real-time. Sometimes we have to make multiple changes to our travel in one day. The Upside Support team is always there to change the travel, especially when my travelers do not have the time to step away from work to get on the phone with airlines, hotels, and rental car agencies.
• Travel Tools. From the web site to the phone app, the Upside tools are very easy to use and are very extensive with functionality.
• Prepay for travel. Prepaying for travel simplifies the booking process and eliminates the need for corporate cards.

Incentivized

• Customer service was awful. It was a running joke that when we had to call customer service for something (frequent), it was a crap-shoot whether we were going to get someone that knew what they were doing.
• The website was not intuitive and sometimes made it difficult to find the flights we wanted. Most of the admins resorted to looking for flights on other services and then searching for that flight specifically in Egencia.

Incentivized

• Booking travel for non-employees or invited users *could* be easier, but it's not that bad.
• Adding support for AA Business Extra number as part of company profiles, but they manually check all of our AA reservations to add it.

Incentivized

It is just so simple to use.

Incentivized

When I had a problem with cancelled and rescheduled flight Egencia team was not helpful at all. They claimed that in their system the flight is still happening hence they will not advise on anything else. I had to spend a lot of time calling the airline to clarify the details and to find out when my flight is happening in the end.

Incentivized

The support from Upside Business Travel is absolutely amazing. Immediately after you book a flight, you get an email from your representative. You can contact them at any time and get them to help you with anything you need or answer any questions. I have used the support before to get an earlier check-in, change flights, and add a night to my stay.

Incentivized

My training was over the phone with some trial and error.

Incentivized

It's not even close! Axios was much more difficult to navigate than Egencia. In my opinion, Egencia more closely mirrors travel booking systems we all use outside of work, which makes training much easier for new users. The ability to automatically download calendar invites, share itineraries, and download PDF receipts is such a big help

Incentivized

I was not a part of the change process, but I am quite happy using Upside over Concur. We were charged just to speak with an agent, and there wasn't an option to communicate online. I love having the chat option with Upside. I do miss the ability to put travel plans on hold to allow colleagues the opportunity to review it before I book, but the pros of Upside far outweigh the cons.

Incentivized

• More efficient booking - save time.
• We can specify when additional approval needs to take place based on perimeters that we set (price, class, etc) - save money!
• All electronic - bookings all online so have easy access to all staff trips.

Incentivized

• It has streamlined the process for booking travel for our company.
• They send me reports instead of me having to create them on my own.
• It saves time at every turn.

Incentivized