After pivoting to the corporate market over a year ago, mobile travel booking and concierge tool Lola, founded by Kayak co-founder and former chief technology officer Paul English, remains a hyperlocal player; the majority of its clients are in the company's Boston vicinity. Despite its limited client base, the company is well-funded and the technology platform itself is growing. English is bringing in Mike Volpe, chief marketing officer of cybersecurity startup Cybereason, on Aug. 1 as CEO to grow Lola's sales and marketing operation and drive customer acquisition. English will shift his role to chief technology officer, the same position he held at Kayak.
He called Volpe "the best B2B marketer not only in Boston but in the country" and told BTN English himself needs to be where he excels: in product development and engineering. "At my other companies, I’ve always had a strong partner on the business side, and I think it’s time to do that at Lola," he said, noting that he wasn't originally in the market for a new CEO but recognized the fit right away when he met with Volpe.
Product Updates
In the meantime, Lola continues to roll out features and has integrated payment solutions and expense providers, putting more T&E management power into the hands of corporates that have as few as 20 employees.
Building on the mobile booking and concierge app, which offers simple price- and threshold-based policy configuration, Lola launched a desktop app today. Lola also now offers a Book on Behalf option, enabling administrators and coworkers to book travel for any other colleague and, through the mobile app, to transfer to the traveler all the itinerary details, travel reminder features and the ability to cancel or change the booking within the Lola tools. "A lot of times with other tools, the person who books the travel has to keep control of changes and the traveler might get email or text notifications but doesn't get all the functionality," said English. "The experience through Lola is almost exactly the same whether you book for yourself of someone else books for you."
Lola also has simplified the payment and expense process, building in an option to register a centralized corporate card. "Some companies may have young employees who don't have their own credit or, because of having to pay expenses upfront, don't want to put travel purchases on their corporate card," said English. However, he also underscored that the road warriors Lola targets always want to leverage their options. "Often, they want to get the points on their personal cards."
The other thing centralized integrated payment offers, though, is efficient expense reporting; travelers need not keep receipts or manage air or hotel charges through an expense process. To further streamline the process, Lola has integrated with Expensify, based on customer demand, but English told BTN the company wants to send data seamlessly to multiple providers.
As the company builds its corporate travel ecosystem and its sales and marketing operations, commercial terms are likely around the corner, as well. So far, Lola has been free to corporations, including the 24/7 concierge service that clients adore. It relies somewhat on hotel commissions right now but mostly on its nearly $45 million in venture capital to build the business. English predicted Lola could be booming soon, with a major partnership around the corner. "We have 12 agents based in Boston right now. Later this summer we will announce a partnership with a company that has thousands of agents who we'll train to use Lola," said English. "As we scale up our marketing, we're not going to need to hire hundreds of our own people but we can rely on a partner with thousands of agents to scale up for us."
English demurred when asked to elaborate. No matter who the partner may be, Lola branding and experience will remain, he confirmed. "That will stay 100 percent intact."
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Correction, Nov. 14, 2018: This article previously referred to a Lola integration with Concur. Lola is not integrated with Concur. BTN regrets the error.