Lola.com, from Lola Travel Company headquartered in Boston, is a travel management platform featuring employee travel points and other rewards, travel spend tracking and management, generate travel itineraries and receipts, and other features.
$250
per month
Upside Business Travel
Score 9.3 out of 10
N/A
Upside Business Travel is a technology based travel management application from the company of the same name headquartered in Washington, D.C.
We are currently in the process of planning our company wide retreat in which we need at least 69 people to book their flights. While with that many people traveling at once, I do suspect I'll get some questions and have to assist some folks however by using Lola.com, the time I would have spent prior will be cut drastically. And I'll be able to see who is taking what flight and obtain departure and arrival information without much interruption to anyone's day. Prior to Lola.com this task would have been something truly daunting, but not this time!
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
Provides corporate leadership with great insights into employee travel costs BEFORE they hit corporate credit cards, thereby facilitating better budgeting, planning, and cash flow management
Offers employees who travel a single interface for booking travel
Provides employees who are traveling with concierge level service when booking and while on the road
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.
Room for existing features to grow and expand, especially on the administrative side
Visually-speaking, the overall layout and color scheme used within the site, specifically when it comes to placement and contrast of key text info, has led to some confusion at times
Need for more support of existing travel rewards accounts
This is just my guess as I'm not involved in the decision aside from providing feedback on using Lola. I think, from what I've heard, that everyone likes Lola and we'll renew the usage. I say this because we're an all-remote company and this greatly solves the logistics of booking flights for everyone.
Lola is simple and straight to the point in regards to usability. I didn't have to figure things out and felt that the interface was intuitive. I loved it.
Lola's customer support is fantastic. They have frequently contacted us when there are travel alerts, or anticipated flight cancellations to re-book us before it was too late. They are always helpful and pleasant and we have never had any issues.
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.
Lola.com is much easier to use in terms of UX. Very little Admin and/or user training is needed to get up and running with Lola.com -- which increases our ability to quickly scale the solution. However, I would say that Concur is able to do more inside the travel arena with the addition of expense tracking.
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.
They have made travel cheaper, so that is a direct reflection to our customers and to us.
Customer Service just makes the stress of travel on our employees not so bad. Knowing we have someone to stand behind us while we travel goes a long way
