Review: Using Gondola To Manage Your Points and Save on Hotel Stays — Is It Worth It?

Collecting points and miles is easy. Managing them is a different story. If you have points spread across multiple transferable points programs, airlines, and hotels, you might have a spreadsheet that you manually update to track your balances. But it doesn’t have to be that difficult.

There are a handful of tools that can automate your point tracking process. The most well-known is AwardWallet, but competitors have popped up over the years. One newcomer is Gondola, a free website that tracks your points balances and upcoming travel, and helps you book hotels with points and cash.

It isn’t quite as feature-packed as AwardWallet or other competitors, but it’s free to use and has an intuitive user interface. Plus, you can use Gondola to save up to 5% on hotel stays while still earning hotel points and elite nights and enjoying your elite status benefits.

Let’s take a quick look at what Gondola does and why you might want to use it if you’re a frequent traveler.

Gondola — Overview

Gondola is a multifaceted travel tool, but at its core, it’s designed to help you track your points balances and see how much they’re worth. Linking your bank and email accounts to Gondola lets you automatically track your balances in most major travel loyalty programs. You can also add your balances manually if you prefer.

Gondola also has a hotel search and booking platform. I’ll discuss this in depth later in this article, but it shows both cash and points rates for hotels in major loyalty programs. You can even make direct hotel bookings that earn hotel points through Gondola while also earning cash-back that you can redeem toward future Gondola hotel bookings.

Other Gondola features include a Trips function that imports airline, hotel, and other travel reservations from your email and displays them as complete trips. All of these features are free to use.

Tracking Points Balances with Gondola

Gondola’s flagship feature is tracking points balances, and it does a decent job of it.

Under the Points tab at the top of the page, you can track hotel, airline, and transferable points programs with Gondola. There’s a section for each type of point, but different types of account connections are required to enable automatic updates.

Tracking hotel points and airline miles requires connecting a Gmail or Microsoft Outlook email account. In short, Gondola scans your email inbox, looks for emails from hotels and airlines that include your points balances, and imports your balances to the application.

This is great if you use either of these email services, but it presents a problem if you don’t. For example, I use iCloud for my personal email account. Gondola doesn’t work with iCloud, so I must manually track my airline miles and hotel point balances within the app. This can also be an issue if you’re concerned about linking your Gmail or Outlook account to Gondola over privacy concerns.

If you use one of these email providers, rest assured that points tracking with Gondola should work fine. I tested Gondola with my wife’s Gmail account, and it populated correctly with her various loyalty balances without issue. It won’t be up-to-the-minute accurate, requiring incoming emails with your balances to update, but it works well as a general overview. Gondola will also give you an estimated value of your points.

Meanwhile, you can track your transferable points balances independently of your email. You can link your bank accounts, and it will track your transferable points balances automatically with no email syncing required. This feature accurately tracks my American Express Membership Rewards, Chase Ultimate Rewards, and Citi ThankYou Rewards points. Unfortunately, it does not support Bilt Rewards or Capital One Miles, and you cannot add these balances manually.

While Gondola isn’t as robust as AwardWallet, it does feel more beginner-friendly in some ways. You don’t have to worry about your accounts syncing on AwardWallet’s system or waiting for 2-factor codes.

That said, Gondola isn’t as accurate as AwardWallet since it only syncs your balances when you get emails, and doesn’t support many of the more obscure programs you’ll find on AwardWallet. Likewise, you can only automatically track airline and hotel balances if you use Gmail or Outlook — this isn’t an issue with AwardWallet.

Bottom Line:

If you use Gmail or Outlook and are comfortable linking your email account to Gondola, it’s an easy way to keep track of your airline miles, hotel points, and transferable point balances in one place. However, you’ll have to track your balances manually if you use iCloud or another email service.

Managing Trips With Gondola

One benefit of linking your email account to Gondola is that the app will track your upcoming travel in the Trips tab. This shows you all of your upcoming trips — whether booked through Gondola or found in a connected email account — and puts your flights and hotels in one place.

This feature provides limited information about your upcoming flights and hotel reservations, such as addresses, departure times, and a flight route map. It’s no substitute for TripIt or another more advanced trip tracking tool, but it could be helpful if your trip populates properly.

But again, this feature has the same downside as Gondola’s points tracking feature — it only works with Gmail or Outlook. I’ve also had some issues with hotel reservations and flights not appearing in the Trips tab. It seems to only work with certain hotels and airlines, though you can reach out to Gondola’s support team if a trip doesn’t show up.

Booking Hotels and Searching for Award Stays With Gondola

Gondola recently rolled out its own hotel booking platform — and it’s not your average online travel agency (OTA). You can earn up to 5% cash-back when you book hotel stays with Gondola. Cash-back is awarded as a Gondola credit that you can use to book future hotel stays through the platform.

Unlike Expedia, Orbitz, or other OTAs, paid bookings made through Gondola are eligible to earn hotel points and elite nights. Plus, you’ll get all the elite benefits you’re entitled to when you book with Gondola. This isn’t the case with most other OTAs.

This is because most hotel loyalty programs require that you book directly to be eligible for these benefits. Thankfully, hotel bookings made through Gondola are still considered direct bookings, so you can still use these benefits when you travel.

You’ll earn 3% cash-back on all your completed hotel bookings, but you can earn 5% back for a year when you take advantage of Gondola’s status challenge. You’ll get 5% back immediately upon enrollment, and you can take advantage of the rate for 30 days. Then, book 3 hotel stays within 30 days of signing up (for travel anytime in the future), and you’ll keep the 5% earning rate for a full year.

Gondola’s hotel booking platform isn’t just for booking paid stays. It also shows award pricing alongside the cent per point value as you search. This makes it easier to know when you’re getting a good deal. Further, the platform shows all points hotels on one map, so it can be your one-stop shop if you have multiple types of hotel points available to you.

It has many great filtering options that make it easy to find hotels you have with the points available to you. It’s worth using this feature even if you don’t use Gondola’s points and trip tracking functionality, as it could help you uncover hidden gems in the next city you visit.

How To Search and Book Hotels With Gondola

Booking hotel stays through Gondola is easy, and I’m a big fan of its interface. Head to the Search tab at the top of the screen, and you’ll be greeted with a list of recommended hotels in various cities worldwide. Think of it like window shopping for hotels.

Then, you can search using the white box at the top of the screen. This works similarly to any other OTA — enter your city, number of people staying in the room, and dates.

When you run a search, you’re greeted with a list of hotels on the left side of the screen and a map on the right side of the screen. This design is more intuitive than many OTAs, which require you to choose between a list and a map view.

A handful of sorting and filtering options are at the top of the screen. You can filter by loyalty program, room type, points or cash cost, star rating, and amenities. You can search multiple loyalty programs at the same time, so if, for example, you have Hilton Honors and Marriott Bonvoy points available, you can compare the cost and value of your points side by side.

Sorting options let you sort hotels by price, distance, the best cash or points value, and Gondola’s recommendations. I like using the “best points value” feature when planning a trip, as it gives me an idea of the best places to use my points when visiting a new city.

When you click on a hotel, you’ll be shown a ton of information about your hotel stay. For example, it will show you a price range for cash stays and a point value range for award nights and tell you if it’s a good value based on historic information about the property. It’ll also show you your point earnings, elite perks you’re eligible for, and how many points you have with said program.

Scroll down to see all available cash and points room types. If you book a cash rate through Gondola, click on the rate you’d like to book. While it may show AAA and other discounted rates for some hotels, you cannot book corporate rates through Gondola.

You’ll be asked to complete some information on Gondola’s website before being redirected to the hotel to finish the booking directly. More information — like check-in times — is available at the bottom of the page.

Gondola’s hotel search functionality is my favorite part of the service. It makes it easy to find hotels you can book with the points you have available to you. Plus, it will give you everything you need to know about booking your desired hotel, including whether or not it’s a good deal on points.

What About the Explore Tab?

You might also notice the Explore tab at the top of the Gondola website. The Explore feature is similar to Search but focuses on helping you discover new hotels and destinations.

When you click into the tab, you’ll see some of the best deals that Gondola has found recently. You can toggle between cash and points deals and filter out specific loyalty programs, the number of points required to book, and the type of experience you’re looking for (under the Gondola Recommended filtering tab).

You can also use this feature to run broad searches for the best deals. At the top of the page, you can enter a destination and the times you’d like to travel. For example, hotel stays in Chicago over weekends in September.

Then, you’ll be presented with the best deals that fit your criteria. You can filter out hotels that fit your desired criteria, and choose whether you’d like to see cash or points deals. You can get more information about and book a hotel seen on the Explore page by clicking on its listing.

This is one of my favorite Gondola features. It’s helped me find a handful of good deals for upcoming trips to San Francisco and Spokane, Washington. In the case of the Spokane trip, it saved me from redeeming Marriott Bonvoy points at a property, since I found a low-cost cash stay at a different Marriott hotel down the street.

Bottom Line:

Gondola will help you book cash and points stays with all major hotel groups. If you decide to book a paid stay through Gondola, you’ll still earn elite nights and hotel points, and you’ll be able to use the elite benefits you’d be entitled to if you booked directly. Even better, you’ll earn cash-back that you can use to cover future stays in the process.

Final Thoughts

Gondola is a powerful tool for award travelers. It gives you an easy-to-use, centralized dashboard for your points balances across your airline, credit card, and hotel loyalty accounts. Plus, you can see your upcoming trips in one place and more easily find award stays with all the major hotel loyalty programs.

In addition, if you decide to pay for a hotel stay, booking through Gondola will give you up to 5% cash-back toward a future booking. This is a great way to triple-stack your rewards on hotel stays, as you’ll earn with the hotel’s loyalty program, your credit card, and Gondola’s in-house loyalty program.

But the site isn’t without its shortcomings. Gondola can’t automatically track your airline and hotel points balances if you don’t use Gmail or Outlook for email. I’d love to see other email providers be added, as Gondola’s user interface is, to me, the best in the points tracking world.