Xola Reviews

Easy to train staff on. If you can work an iPhone you can work on Xola.
Good mobile access for staff

- Very little customization available for unique businesses
- Limited accounting reports that take heavy editing in Excel to get the needed information
- Organizes by customer email instead of name, can create major problems.
- Europe based support team so finding a time to connect with them can be tough
- No ability for Admin accounts to make edits or corrections to individual sales, especially frustrating on the accounting side.
- No archiving feature for product listings. So old products remain on all active inventory lists, becoming very cumbersome to search through.
- Easy software for small/medium sized companies, not good for larger companies
- Limited marketing features and hard to customize
- The biggest issue for us is limited reporting especially on the accounting side. For database software, that is a huge drawback. I should be able to create and run custom reports on all of the info in the system but your stuck with a rigid structure that you then have to edit and narrow down in Excel, taking lots of extra time. We won't be able to stay with Xola as we grow unless this feature improves.

The best software on the market for tour bookings and management. I’ve researched over 20 other competitors- don’t waste your time if you’re shopping around- get Xola.

It doesnt have some of the nuances we would like to see, and they changed their booking layout in a way that I think is not an improvement. However, I think they will continue to make improvements

It is easy to use, easy to teach to staff, and I enjoy most features.

I haven't found anything I don't like thus far.

It is pretty easy to use. There isn't much I like about it.

I don't like the refund process the summary especially
The fact that they take there 3% right after a booking
Customer support at other places wil do things for you

Xola features a great online dashboard and an open API for easy integration. Customer service is fantastic; I've always gotten very quick responses via online chat and opening tickets with the company's IT team.

The reporting and analytics tools have lots of room for improvement. Xola has a lot of data to work with, but clients can only see a limited amount of it via the online dashboard. Luckily the API is a great resource for retrieving data, but obviously not as easy to use as an improved reporting dashboard would be.

Is easy to use, my customers find it useful and the best feature for our business is to get Google Analytics data and the new Xola custom reports.

We really need to show more info in the booking detail not just day picker. Maybe some custom fields like a map, conditional inputs, description, etc. I know we can get this info in the questionnaire after booking, but we believe that displaying questions like "you need pick up?" "are you arriving in airplane or cruiser?"

Xola has a ton of features that make it easy to keep everything a customer purchases all in one place. The gift card sales easily integrate with the reservation system so customers can redeem them themselves online, gift offers help us sell more of them, the CRM allows us to easily export customer info and send them targeted emails and global settings allow us to automatically send emails to customers asking for reviews or send a discount code for them to come back in. All around a great software, but many softwares have similar features. What sets Xola apart from other companies we've dealt with it their customer service. Someone is always available to answer questions in the online chat or you can easily schedule a call with a support person if you have more in-depth questions. I also appreciate that we receive emails when certain features might be down. We've used software companies in the past that don't let us know of potential issues until we are the ones reporting them! Xola pre-empts this and answers our questions before we run across any issues.

Because this software is very flexible and there are so many options, some of the back office features can be tricky to use. For example, when you need to process a refund for a customer, you have three options to select from (reduce booking value and refund, refund only etc.). They do a good job of labeling things with descriptions, but it can still take some getting used to and training. Also, the page that Xola takes customers to when they click Book Now on our website is all Xola-branded. It would be awesome to allow customization to this page to include our logo so that customers trust they are still on the correct website.

Finally, I'm not a fan of 6% fee they are charging every customer now. This is a recent transition from a paid monthly subscription from us to an additional fee paid by our customers. After some research, it seems like this is the industry standard now, but we hate that we have to charge our customers an additional fee to make a reservation with us online. We want to encourage our customers to make reservations online so our in-store staff isn't bogged down with taking reservations over the phone. Additionally, Xola is making quite a bit more money off of us and our customers by tacking on that percentage compared to the monthly fee we used to pay. This is one of the only cons to the software.

I started with Xola back when the booking software genre was almost nonexistent. Back then there was Bookeo and that was about it. Now I get a sales call every week from competitors. Peek Pro seems to be the only software that is more feature rich but they are pushy and spam your customers if they get ahold of your data base so beware about them. Xola has an easy and beautiful interface. Non-pushy sales people. Help when you need it. Great ability to manage customers IF you never have to reschedule. The cost is lower than other companies if your doing volume greater than 5K a month. A good choice but you need a dedicated reservationist if you are offering an experience were rescheduling is common.

When pricing out a booking software company for your business consider the cost of an employee to manually have to reschedule your customers if your experience is prone to cancellation i.e. rain, wind, snow etc. and add it to the monthly cost of Xola to get an accurate idea of the true cost. The point of having a booking software is so you can concentrate on running your business and making it grow. Playing secretary is part of owning a small business but when it takes from R&D, marketing, quality of life it can kill you. Xola only allows your customer to book and reschedule themselves prior to their scheduled date. If you cancel the day of the adventure the customer has NO ability to reschedule if your experience is cancelled due to weather. If you are in a tourist area where you don't have an option to reschedule people because they are on vacation or the experience that you provide is indoor and cancellations rarely occur Xola is a great choice. If your experience is subject to weather and you take the entirety of the experience cost in advance, Xola has fallen behind severely compared to the the other big name in booking software. I provide Hot Air Balloon rides in an area that is prone to strong winds and rain during the season. My demographic is local and I sell my experience to customers that can and know that rescheduling is normal. I leave a recorded message the day of the flight and if the flight is cancelled there is no way in Xola to email the passengers a link to reschedule! Xola allows the customer to select another date prior to the experience and you can set those perimeters but after the customers first date choice, if it is cancelled, that is where you are left back in the 80's. In order to get your customers rescheduled on another date you need to do it over the phone and manually move them in Xola and online for it to move in real time. Xola has completely missed the boat for the experience provider that has to cancel for environmental reasons. I have submitted this feature request for two years now and it has shown no movement. They said it is not a common feature request and told us we could give the customer a "store credit". A credit sounded good until we realized that the customer would have to put al their personal detail starting with their name again to go that route. That is just not an appropriate thing to have your customers who are paying good money have to do and it looks unprofessional. I know for a fact two other operations left Xola for a booking company that offers a solution to the common problem of rescheduling for us outdoor providers. I think that they perhaps specialize in the hiking tours, or biking tour company that goes wind, rain, or shine and just refunds their customer if they cancel. Perhaps most of Xola's merchants operate in tourist areas where the customer does not reschedule because they are going home from vacation. The irony is that they offer our customers a great option to reschedule themselves prior to their first date. Why not extend that availability to after the date in case the experience is cancelled and the customer doesn't want a refund or via policy has to reschedule.

For customers booking online, selecting a date and paying is seamless. The merchant can customize a checklist for the customer i.e. what to bring, what's included, a map the meeting point. We receive just the odd phone call asking for clarification and payment is quick. On the other hand we need to hire staff to answer the phones just to rebook our customers on days it is raining or too windy to fly. On average another 40 hours of phone calls and talk time is added to our expense because of the lack of a customizable reschedule link we could send our customers so they could reschedule themselves. Customers like not having to leave voicemails if we are on the other line and %95 of customers would rather NOT wait to speak to a reservationist to go over dates that may or may not be filled. It's really frustrating and I do not believe we are the only one or one of the few merchants that need or would find a simple reschedule feature useful as they have implied to us.

The only other con is that they now leave the price on the gift certificates when a customer buys one. This was not always the case. Xola has a mailable and printable gift certificate option which we utilize heavily and you can now offer experiences at a discount but they for some reason notify the recipient of the price. We have been told and agree with several of our customers that leaving the price on the gift certificate is tacky. It has not always been that way, just with the recent update. I understand if you are giving a cash card to someone, you would need and want the recipient to know the price to avoid an embarrassing moment at a store or restaurant but who leaves the price tag on a gift? Xola gives the recipient a code so the recipient can book only and that process is easy but it's clear how much nanny spent and loves them the moment they get the printed gift certificate or email.

We went from chasing a couple hundred bucks a week to help pay for a hobby we love and turned it in to a serious 2 person small business with gross income in the six digits, well 3 person and income in the 5 digits because we need someone to handle all the manual reschedules. Feature requests do get noticed but at about 1.5 year turn around. It's been two years since we have been asking for this. We have grown and enjoyed Xola, we just for their sake since the booking software market is so competitive now want to see them be #1 and have the client base Peek Pro does as they are a lot more ethical but we fear they won't if this feature isn't added and if the feature turnaround isn't quicker.

Our review may appear negative even though we enjoy most of Xola. We understand all businesses have their little intricacies but we have been an experience provider for over ten years now and have offered many activities, rescheduling is a part of booking management no matter what adventure you provide, we and we are certain most other experience providers agree, just understand you will NOT have that option with Xola. Xola could be the best by far with just a couple more features.

We love the different dashboards and views. It's versatile but very user-friendly.

There is no SMS feature for employees. The scheduling is outdated (have to schedule one activity at a time). Xola Kiosk is only available for admin use which is a big security risk. Can't use for brick and mortar AND mobile.

Xola has really streamlined the booking process. It has made it easier for us, in the office, to manage bookings coming in and see when trips and courses are happening. If we are booking private trips or courses that are not listed on our website, we have built our backend system to allow for us to do this quickly. Xola keeps our customers credit card numbers on file in a safe and secure manor making it easy for us to take deposits and final payments prior to a trip or course. Our customers seem to find the booking process easy and user friendly. We have also integrated the use of Smartwaiver with Xola which has made tracking waivers much easier and taken the need of our guides to do it away. Our guides are still learning Xola but Xola has made it so the guides can quickly access the client information without having to send it in a seperate email.

The biggest thing that we wish was different was that on the calendar, during booking and on the backend, that Xola showed the length of our courses. It only shows the start date, and although this hasn't been a problem, it would be something that would be a nice addition to make life a bit easier. Along the same lines we have courses (single courses) that run Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday & Sunday and would like to be able to show the custom schedule of that course in some capacity, even just on our backend calendar to see the overlap with other trips.

It's intuitive for basic, everyday needs: making reservations, taking payment online or at the door, making coupons, rescheduling reservations, etc. Most of the functions are self-explanatory. To refund someone, you click the "refund" button. To make an additional charge, you click the "charge" button. Nothing too complicated and nothing too difficult to find.

Behind-the-scenes stuff can be difficult to access. For example, I can't see all the people who were originally scheduled for a specific date in order to determine how many people reschedule away from that date. I also can't filter my tag searches. I want to be able to search for "all bookings with [X tag] between [Y date] and [Z date]." To do that, I would need to download a full report (which is NOT an intuitive process) and then manually search for these tags.
There is also not an intuitive way to split payments! If the reservation has a coupon or a non-standard ticket price and they want to split payments at the door, we need to have a calculator on hand and god help us if someone on a reservation with a coupon wants to pay for more than one ticket.
When a customer's card doesn't work on a payment, it won't tell me why. Which means we can't tell the customers why and there are five extra steps they need to take which is inconvenient for all.
Also: it's buggy as hell. I can't refresh the page because it will log me out. I can't click the back button because that takes me to the first Dashboard (where only the dates and times show up and not the reservation names) no matter what page I am on. Two computers cannot take payment at the same time. The capacity changes don't always take. Sometimes, the website won't scroll.

Allows for tours that have minimums - Our tours require 8 person to sign up in order for a tour to go (minimum). Xola handles this portion far far better than any of the other competitors and I have met with a number of them. If you do minimums, and care about customer communication, this is a must use.

Software works with many options
Very strong amount of features
Very strong customer support
Reasonable competitive pricing
Great analytics
They will listen to and often times implement feature requests
Good integration with booking site (Yelp / Google / TA)

Highly recommended!

App on Android can be a bit buggy and frustrating - not a deal breaker. Sometimes you may have to click buttons a bunch before it responds or have to shut it down and reload it. Won't allow you to take a call and check the app when roaming (this does work if you have active internet).

Would like to see further integration with hotel and other booking companies

System is user friendly, clean and easy for backend users

Partner fees are costly. Unable to tire pricing in one listing for separate days

The strength of this company is the fantastic support it provides for its clients. This is both at the set-up stage, and also after implementation has started. It is available 24/7, and if the on-line platform is not sufficient to solve the technical issue or the user-end challenge, a telephone conversation can be easily scheduled.
This was even the case at the beginning of my using the platform: I was unfamiliar with the product and needed a lot of help to navigate the site initially. This is natural, of course, but what surprised me was when I had not used a particular function after a period of time (and so I had forgotten how to perform a specific function), the support team was extremely patient with me and with my rather elementary question.

The support continued as I made non-standard bookings for my bicycle tours - each time I contacted them, the support team walked me through the necessary steps. They were helpful, polite, and understanding. Sometimes I felt embarrassed by my requests (oh, of course - duh!) “I’m sorry for bothering you” I would say afterwards, but they never made me feel the question was unjustified.

In sum, I have only good things to say about the interpersonal contact I had with Xola. I would rate them 11/10 for this aspect.

The platform itself is a good one, although there are some minor limitations for my purposes that I experienced. A few little tweaks for payments and bookings would be good.
8/10 in this category.

No difficulties, just a couple of limitations for payments and parameters for booking.

The focus on customer interface. We are customer-first in everything that we do and it is apparent that Xola is as well. They innovate quickly and their team is great.

Their reporting and tracking is average, but improving. We requested a few things as we are growing, some of which have been addressed, while a few have not.