Lola.com vs. Routespring

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!

Incentivized

Routespring has worked great for us for following reasons:

1. We prefer not to have our employees pay for travel to avoid the reimbursement process as much as possible. Routespring's ability to configure centralized payments and extensive prepaid inventory helps us achieve that.
2. We need closely control our travel spend as it directly impacts our cost of goods. The ease of configuring budget controls at multiple levels help us manage the costs almost effortlessly.
3. Above all, Routespring has an excellent team of support people. Our team is super happy with their professional approach and responsiveness. We have never had any issue.
4. On the admin side as well, I have always had a great experience in getting things done with the help of their account management team. We have been able to make changes and process updates on very short-timelines. They have competitive rates and they always maintain consistent communication on how to bring costs down.

• Well designed and easy to use site. Makes finding and booking simple.
• Helps in collecting travel information for each traveler makes booking flights for multiple people super easy!
• Lola.com support will help take care of flight changes and any other issues.

Incentivized

• User-friendly approval process
• Centralized payments for all travel
• Excellent & very responsive customer service and account management
• Flexible budget controls

• 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

Incentivized

• It's hard to tell where to go to book a flight right after you create an account.
• It is a pretty basic design - I think they'd raise confidence in their tech skills even further if the site were a little flashier.
• The site is geared toward companies whose employees all have the same email address domain. However, they are able to accommodate different email addresses if you provide them so they can add the domains to your account.

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.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

After trying for weeks to (unsuccessfully) set up an account with another online booking agency, we contacted Routespring to see if they could help us based on the great reviews we saw. It took them about three days total to have everything in place and ready for our guests to start booking their flights while ticket prices were still reasonable. They have been attentive to all of our needs, respond quickly and professionally to guest questions, and are a lot of fun to work with as well. We couldn't have asked for a better partner for this project!

We haven't used or evaluated other travel management platforms because they always seemed geared towards larger, enterprise-level companies. For us, Lola.com was appealing because it seemed well suited to a company of our size, and we really loved the personal attention that is built in to the platform. Ultimately, we chose it for the reasonable price, functionality, ease of use, and excellent service.

Incentivized

Our experience with larger booking agencies has so far been unimpressive. It seems like, because we are a small non-profit with a smaller budget, we were definitely not top of mind for customer service and often waited up to a week for questions to be answered. Routespring is a small but mighty organization that will definitely make a name for themselves in this arena if they continue on the path they're on now. They work hard and quickly to ensure you are satisfied with their service and that your guests have a seamless experience booking travel and accommodations on their platform. It is obvious that they truly care about their clients.

• 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

• This platform saved us many, many employee hours by eliminating the need to book flights for guests, track and approve travel receipts and dispense reimbursement.
• Our guests could easily book their flights in one place with a line of credit we were invoiced for weekly, with our credit card on file as a backup. For the first time ever, our travel planning is completely done two months before the Conference.
• We were able to set spending caps on ticket prices to stay within our budget, and we received notifications if anyone requested a ticket above the limit we set or tried to upgrade on our account.