Lola.com

Based in Boston's Financial District, Lola.com emerged as a significant and highly praised entity in the business travel management sector. Founded in 2015 by Paul English, a co-founder of the massively successful travel search engine Kayak, the company carried substantial industry credibility from its inception. It wasn't just another travel agency; Lola.com was a technology-first company dedicated to solving the complex and often frustrating challenges of corporate travel through its sophisticated software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform. The company’s trajectory, from a celebrated innovator to its eventual acquisition, offers valuable insights for any business evaluating business travel solutions.

What Lola.com Did Well

Lola.com carved out a niche by focusing intently on the needs of small and mid-sized businesses, a segment often underserved by larger, more cumbersome corporate travel platforms. Its core offering was a streamlined, intuitive platform that empowered employees with self-service flight booking and hotel reservations while giving finance departments robust control and visibility over expenditures. This approach aimed to eliminate the typical bottlenecks and headaches associated with corporate travel planning.

The positive experiences of its clients paint a clear picture of the company's strengths. User reviews consistently highlight the platform's ease of use and, most notably, its exceptional customer support. One client detailed an instance where their employee was stranded, and the Lola.com support team worked with them until 1 a.m. to secure a flight home. Another user recounted how the system proactively identified a double-booking error made by an employee and reached out to correct it. This blend of smart technology with a highly responsive human touch was a cornerstone of their service model. The support was not just for emergencies; clients lauded the team's availability and efficiency for routine changes and bookings, often stating it was the best customer service they had ever experienced from a travel company.

Key Strengths and Features:

• Simplified Booking Process: The platform was designed to be incredibly simple, allowing employees to manage their own travel arrangements without extensive training or reliance on an administrator. This autonomy saved time and reduced friction for frequent travelers.
• Powerful Expense Management: Lola.com wasn't just about booking. It was a comprehensive travel and expense software. It provided finance leaders with real-time analytics on employee travel costs, helping to enforce travel policies and manage budgets effectively.
• 24/7 Human Support: Unlike many tech platforms that hide their support teams behind layers of automated responses, Lola.com was known for its accessible and highly effective support staff. This was a critical differentiator, providing peace of mind to companies whose employees were on the road.
• Industry Recognition: The company's excellence was recognized within the industry, earning high ratings and awards for its platform's ease of use, setup, and quality of support. A significant milestone was its five-year exclusive partnership with American Express Global Business Travel, a major validation of its software and approach.

The Inevitable Downside: Permanent Closure

The most significant drawback for any potential customer looking into Lola.com today is straightforward: it is no longer in operation. The business is marked as permanently closed. This wasn't a failure in the traditional sense of a company going out of business due to a lack of customers or a flawed product. Instead, its journey ended with an acquisition.

The COVID-19 pandemic dealt a severe blow to the entire travel industry, and corporate travel was hit particularly hard. With business trips grinding to a halt, Lola.com's primary revenue stream vanished almost overnight. In a strategic effort to survive, the company pivoted in 2020, leveraging its platform's architecture to launch Lola Spend, a tool for managing general corporate spending and expenses, not just travel. This pivot showcased the team's agility but couldn't fully insulate them from the market's collapse.

In October 2021, it was announced that Capital One was acquiring Lola.com. However, this was not an acquisition to continue the existing corporate travel agency services. Capital One's interest was in the talented engineering team and the underlying fintech platform to bolster its own business-to-business payment solutions. Following the acquisition, Lola.com ceased all its operations, shut down its platform, and the team was integrated into Capital One to work on new projects. Existing corporate clients were transitioned to other platforms.

Final Assessment

For a potential client, Lola.com exists now only as a case study of a highly effective online booking tool and corporate travel service. The overwhelmingly positive feedback and high user ratings speak to a company that genuinely understood and solved the pain points of business travel management. They successfully combined a user-friendly software experience with an outstanding human support element, saving their clients time, money, and stress.

While you cannot procure their services today, the story of Lola.com provides a valuable benchmark for what to look for in a corporate travel agency. The issues they solved—clunky booking processes, poor expense visibility, and nonexistent support—are still prevalent. The legacy of Lola.com is its demonstration that a technology-driven, customer-centric approach can transform a complex corporate function into a seamless experience. Its ultimate fate, an acquisition driven by its talented team and robust technology, is a testament to the quality of what they built, even if it means their specific service is no longer available on the market.