How Gondola helps travelers search hotels, track trips and save money
Finding the best way to book a hotel often requires juggling multiple loyalty programs, award search tools and booking websites. Even after you book, you may need to keep checking whether rates drop so you can rebook and save points or cash.
Gondola aims to simplify that process. The free platform combines hotel search, loyalty tracking and booking monitoring in one place, helping travelers compare points and cash rates, track upcoming trips, and potentially save money through automatic repricing tools. I tested Gondola's features to see how well it works and whether it's worth adding to your travel toolkit.
What is Gondola?
Gondola is a free-to-use AI-powered travel platform that:
- Helps you compare hotels across programs (including a points versus cash comparison for each property and a useful explore feature)
- Monitors your bookings for price drops
- Tracks your loyalty accounts in one place
- Awards you with Gondola Cash rewards
Gondola has a website, but you can also download the Gondola mobile app for iOS and Android. As you search and book through Gondola, it learns your preferences. So, you'll likely see more results that you like as you use Gondola more frequently.
Related: These 14 apps and websites make award redemptions easier to find
How Gondola works
Gondola tracks your loyalty accounts and monitors your upcoming bookings for price drops when you link one or more email accounts. It's quick and easy to link Google, Microsoft and Yahoo email accounts (it took me less than 30 seconds to link my Gmail account, for example).
But, if you don't want to link your email accounts, you can also forward confirmation emails to trips@gondola.ai. Assuming you've set up your Gondola account with the email address(es) from which you'll forward confirmation emails, this is another way you can get Gondola to add bookings to your Trips page and track them for price drops.
Gondola has some useful features for families and travelers with assistants. In particular, the family pool feature is useful if one person tends to manage the rewards for multiple other family members. And the booking delegation feature is useful if an assistant, concierge or employee makes bookings for you.
Of course, you don't have to link your email accounts or forward confirmation emails to use Gondola's hotel search and explore features. These features don't rely on knowing your account balances and upcoming bookings, but do take them into account when displaying search results and recommending properties.
Using the Gondola hotel search
One of the most useful features of Gondola is its hotel search. Just enter your destination, travel dates and the number of guests before clicking to search.
The page that loads with results will show paid rates compared to award rates for properties Gondola thinks you'll be most interested in.
Click "For you" to load some curated options, which should improve as Gondola gets to know you and the types of properties you like to book. You can also sort by many different options, including by best points value, best cash value, lowest points cost, lowest cash cost, closest, recommended and like past stays. Plus, you can filter the results by hotel and credit card point type.
Advanced filters let you filter by average nightly points or cash costs, as well as by must-have amenities such as airport shuttle, free breakfast and pet-friendly.
Once you click on a specific property, you'll see a lot of useful information. Particularly interesting are the panels on why you might like this hotel, a points versus cash comparison, how you'd earn if you book a paid stay and how your loyalty could play into your stay.
And when you look at specific room types, you'll also see that Gondola has calculated your expected earnings on paid rates and the equivalent cost on points rates.
If you try to book an award stay through Gondola (and don't have Gondola Gold status), you'll get a message that you must have Gondola Gold status to proceed. But no worries, as you can go to the loyalty program's website and make the booking yourself.
Meanwhile, if you try to book a paid stay through Gondola, you can do that. Best of all, stays you book through Gondola are direct bookings. So, you'll get all the same elite benefits and earnings as if you'd booked through the hotel program's app or website.
Plus, you'll earn Gondola Cash rewards when you book a paid stay through Gondola.
Related: 10 truly special luxury hotels and resorts you can book with points
Gondola Cash rewards
You'll earn Gondola Cash rewards on every paid hotel stay and car rental you book through Gondola. The amount you'll earn depends on your Gondola status tier. You can also earn Gondola Cash when you refer other travelers to Gondola, and they complete their first stay booked through Gondola.
You can see your current Gondola Cash rewards in your Rewards Dashboard once you complete a stay. And good news: Gondola Cash rewards don't expire.
You can redeem Gondola Cash when booking a hotel stay. You must book the Gondola Cash rate, and you'll currently need enough Gondola Cash to cover the entire stay. However, the Gondola Cash help page says that partial payments will be accepted soon.
One negative to keep in mind when redeeming Gondola Cash for hotel stays is that Gondola Cash redemptions aren't processed as direct bookings. So, you won't get elite earnings and benefits on these redemptions. As such, you may want to redeem Gondola Cash for stays at independent properties or stays for which you don't need any elite benefits.
Gondola status tiers
Gondola has three membership tiers.
The first tier, member, is for members without status. Members earn 3% Gondola Cash rewards on paid hotels booked through Gondola, earn 1% Gondola Cash rewards on paid rental cards booked through Gondola and get access to room rate monitoring for all refundable hotel stays.
The first elite tier, Silver, is for members who book 30 hotel nights through Gondola, spend $10,000 on paid travel through Gondola, or refer five other people to Gondola in a calendar year. Silver members earn 5% Gondola Cash rewards on paid hotels booked through Gondola, earn 2% Gondola Cash rewards on paid car rentals booked through Gondola and get access to flight fare monitoring and rate alerts for hotel price tracking.
The second elite tier, Gold, is for members who stay 60 hotel nights booked through Gondola, spend $20,000 on paid travel booked through Gondola, or refer 10 other people to Gondola in a calendar year. Gold members earn 7% Gondola Cash rewards on paid hotels booked through Gondola, earn 3% Gondola Cash rewards on paid rental cars booked through Gondola and get access to Gondola Concierge for points-based reservations across all hotel chains.
If you earn Silver or Gold status, you'll keep it through the end of the year after the one in which you earn it. Note that Gondola occasionally offers targeted status challenges, so keep an eye on your account to see if you get one. For example, I currently have a status challenge that would let me enjoy Silver status through the end of 2026 if I book three nights or spend $1,000 by June 8, even if the stay is later.
Gondola hotel explore tool
Gondola's hotel explore tool may be the most underrated part of the site, as you can use it to find paid or award deals if you have flexibility about exactly where you go.
You can set filters to consider only specific hotel loyalty programs, hotels with specific star ratings, or hotels within a particular points range. You can also choose whether to search for stays on specific dates or to search for stays of a specific length starting in a specific month.
This can be super useful. For example, if you're on a road trip, you might want to search for hotels within a specific map area that cost 10,000 points or less per night.
It can also help you find hidden gems, especially if you don't have a strong preference on where exactly you stay within a specific region. For example, you could use it to find a good opportunity to redeem Marriott points in Southeast Asia.
You can also search for cash deals with the hotel explore tool.
Tracking trips and rewards with Gondola
If you connect your email account(s) to Gondola, Gondola can automatically scan for travel confirmation emails from verified travel providers (you can see the list here). Gondola then uses this information to update your loyalty balances on your Points page.
Most of the information that appears on my Points page is accurate. However, don't assume that all the information you see is completely up to date. For example, my Choice Privileges account only has around 10,000 points, not the 331,250 points listed on my Points page. Even after clicking to have Gondola update my account, the incorrect amount still appeared. I could manually update the balance, but I'm instead waiting to see if it eventually corrects itself.
Gondola also uses information from emails it scans to update your bookings on your Trips page.
This, too, may occasionally have issues, though. For example, Gondola misinterpreted an upcoming Marriott Homes and Villas stay as two stays at other Marriott properties, neither of which is where I'll actually be staying.
You can manually add loyalty programs and credit cards from your loyalty dashboard by clicking "Add" and then selecting what you want to add. You can also manually add flight credits and suite upgrade certificates from within each airline or hotel loyalty account if you'd like.
Especially if you already use another loyalty-tracking tool like AwardWallet or Tripit Pro, you might not see the need to link your email accounts to power Gondola's Points and Trips pages. But you may still want to link your email accounts, as Gondola offers repricing and AutoSave features that neither of these tools currently offers (Tripit Pro offers a Fare Tracker feature, but this is only for paid flights).
Repricing and AutoSave with Gondola
Gondola offers repricing and AutoSave features that can save you serious points, miles and cash on your travel bookings.
Gondola says the average Gondola user saves $413 per year by enabling automatic rate-drop monitoring for flights and hotels. This automatic rate-drop monitoring is free and available to all Gondola members, but you must specifically enable it from your Trips page.
AutoSave works on bookings made directly with airlines and hotels by tracking your refundable hotel and flight reservations and securing a lower rate once one is found. In the case of hotel stays rebooked by AutoSave, the hotel issues a new reservation at the new lower rate, Gondola cancels your old reservation, and you'll also earn Gondola Cash rewards on your new stay. For flights rebooked by AutoSave, you'll keep your same seat, confirmation number and payment method, but you'll receive a flight credit from the airline for the fare difference.
I haven't enabled AutoSave since I'm not comfortable with letting a service (or really anyone besides me) reprice my bookings. Luckily, Gondola's price alerts can be extremely valuable if you want to reprice flights yourself.
If you are a member without any Gondola status, you'll get access to room rate monitoring for refundable hotel stays. With this monitoring, you'll receive an email if Gondola finds a lower refundable rate for a hotel you've booked.
However, you might not always get an email. As I was scrolling through my Trips page, I noticed Gondola found a lower award rate for an upcoming Hyatt stay.
If you have Gondola Silver or Gold status, you also get access to flight fare monitoring and rate alerts for hotel price tracking.
Related: These new tools will track your flights and get you refunds if the price drops
Bottom line
Gondola combines hotel search, loyalty tracking and booking monitoring into a single platform. During my testing, I found some inaccuracies in loyalty balances and trip tracking, so I wouldn't rely on Gondola as my sole source for managing my trips and rewards. However, its biggest strength isn't tracking loyalty programs — it's helping travelers find better hotel booking options and save money on reservations they've already made.
Frequent travelers, especially those who regularly redeem hotel points, may find significant value in Gondola's points-versus-cash comparisons, hotel explore tool and rate-monitoring features. The ability to compare redemption options across programs and receive alerts when prices drop can help you stretch your points, miles and cash further. Best of all, Gondola is free to use, making it easy to test whether its search, tracking and repricing tools are a good fit for you.
Frequently asked questions
Connecting your email account to Gondola is generally safe if you're comfortable granting a third-party travel service access to your travel confirmation emails. If you prefer not to connect your email account, you can still use Gondola's hotel search tools and can forward travel confirmation emails to Gondola individually to add specific trips to your account.
Hotels booked through Gondola count as direct bookings with participating hotel loyalty programs, meaning you can earn points, elite night credits and elite benefits just as you would if you booked directly with the hotel. One notable exception is when you redeem Gondola Cash rewards for a hotel stay, as these reservations aren't processed as direct bookings.
Gondola supports many major hotel loyalty programs, including Marriott Bonvoy, Hilton Honors, World of Hyatt and IHG One Rewards. The platform can compare cash and award rates across these programs, track loyalty balances and help travelers evaluate whether it makes more sense to pay cash or redeem points for a stay.
Gondola combines hotel search, loyalty tracking and booking monitoring in a single platform. While tools like AwardWallet and TripIt Pro primarily focus on tracking rewards accounts and organizing travel plans, Gondola also helps travelers compare hotel points and cash rates, search for award stays and monitor reservations for price drops.
Gondola's AutoSave feature can monitor eligible hotel and flight reservations and automatically secure a lower price when one becomes available. For hotels, Gondola can rebook a stay at the lower rate and cancel the original reservation. For flights, travelers generally keep the same seat and confirmation number while receiving a travel credit for the fare difference.