rewrite this title Gondola Hotel Search Review: It’s My Favorite Tool – NerdWallet

Gondola is a free hotel search and booking platform that easily lets you compare the cost of cash and award stays. This makes it easier to find award prices across multiple brands simultaneously and decide whether to use cash or points to book a hotel stay.

On top of rewards from your credit card and hotel loyalty program, Gondola offers its own rewards system, called Gondola Cash, which provides 3 to 7% back for future cash bookings based on your status.

Gondola has become my favorite hotel award search tool because it makes it easy to compare cash and award prices across brands and to stack rewards when booking with cash.

However, there are a few drawbacks, including no availability alerts, so you can’t get notified if award space becomes available. And to use the price drop alerts, you either have to forward confirmation emails to Gondola or give the platform access to your inbox or loyalty accounts. For some people, that may lead to data privacy concerns.

Gondola doesn’t charge a membership fee. Create an account, and you gain access to all of Gondola’s features, which are accessible on desktop or the iOS and Android apps.

To use Gondola’s price drop alerts and point-tracking features, you need to give it access to your email hotel reservations. There are a few different ways to do this. Once you log in, you can give Gondola access to your email account so it can automatically track reservations and scrape your email for your point balances with hotel loyalty programs.

Or, if you don’t want Gondola to access your email, click on “Other Options,” then select “Forward Emails to Gondola” or “Manually Track Your Points.” I’m not okay with third parties having access to my email, and I recommend manually forwarding emails to Gondola and inputting your loyalty status and points balances for each program.

If you choose to forward reservation confirmation emails to Gondola (as I do), you must first register that email address with Gondola and then forward your confirmation emails from that address. Once forwarded, it only takes a few minutes for that reservation to appear in your Gondola account.

One of my favorite features of Gondola is the “Explore” tool. This lets you see the best value stays across the globe for both cash and points bookings for the next six months. The filters are robust, allowing you to select between 10 credit card and hotel loyalty programs; “vibes,” including beach, ski, pet-friendly, romantic, luxury, and family; property rating from 1 to 5 stars; and the total points cost for all nights.

For example, below is a map view of results for point deals on 4- or 5-star beach, luxury or romantic stays in the Caribbean for May 2026 using hotels accessible through the Chase Ultimate Rewards® program.

Searches on Gondola are fast, usually completing within about 10 seconds. I compared the prices shown on Gondola for both points and cash stays, and each time the results matched with the member rate for booking directly with the hotel.

Get the same prices as booking direct

Gondola offers the same member and promotional rates as you’ll find by booking directly with the hotel. Plus, you’ll earn extra rewards in the form of Gondola Cash.

Gondola is great for showing you all the hotel options in a particular place or region based on your search criteria. Similar to a traditional online travel agency like Kayak or Expedia, you can filter by factors like pet-friendly, pool, free breakfast or room type. But the real differentiator is the value filter, which shows you the best prices for both cash and points bookings relative to historical pricing.

Search results show a ton of valuable information for each hotel, including the typical price range for both cash and points, allowing you to easily tell if the price on your travel dates is a good value compared to historical pricing. No other tool does this in a way that’s so easy to digest.

For existing reservations, including those not booked through Gondola, the platform will alert you if the price drops after you make the booking. If you made a refundable reservation, you can then go back and rebook at the lower cost and pocket the difference in either cash or points. In today’s world of dynamic award pricing, this can potentially save you a lot of points.

Gondola offers its own elite status program and rewards, called Gondola Cash, which can be redeemed at a dollar-for-dollar rate towards future stays with no expiration. There are three tiers and three different ways to qualify for the Silver and Gold tiers:

Each status is valid through the calendar year it is earned and the entire following year. The night and spend requirements are based on when you check out for your reservation.

The biggest drawback of Gondola is the lack of alerts for price and award availability.

Without an existing reservation, you can’t set an alert for when the price drops below a certain threshold, which would be useful when you don’t want to pay, for example, more than $300 or 50,000 points a night for a specific hotel. Additionally, there are no alerts for when award space opens. You’ll need a tool like Rooms.Aero or PointsYeah for that.

Signing up for a Gondola account used to require platform access to your email, raising data privacy concerns. While that’s no longer required, connecting your email account is the most streamlined way to use the platform. You can also manually send hotel reservations to Gondola, or add reservation and loyalty program details to your account, to receive price drop alerts.

Searches with Gondola are fast and easy. To start, navigate to the Gondola homepage.

To begin a search, enter your destination and travel details into the search bar. The results will include both a map and list view of available properties. Each property shows the cash and points cost, along with which transferable credit card points are compatible with the hotel program.

My favorite feature is the color-coded points redemption value: Green is a better-than-average value, white is a typical value, and red is a below-average value. These values are based on the overall point values for that specific hotel currency, allowing you to easily know if you’re getting a good deal for that stay. If no redemption value is shown, there’s no award space available for those dates.

The level of detail you’ll see for each property is unmatched by any other search tool and includes property details and photos, benefits based on your loyalty status, a historical view of the price for both points and cash, and your total earning potential for the stay. I love that there is so much information, but it’s presented in a way that makes it easy to scan.

When you scroll down, you’ll see the price in points and cash for each available room type.

Keep scrolling and you’ll see the “alerts” section. This gives you a calendar view of pricing and availability at that hotel. The redemption value is shown next to the historical price, and the “updated” column indicates when the tool last saw a points rate change. Again, this is color-coded, where each color indicates the value for your points; green is excellent, orange is good and red is poor.

Scroll even further and you’ll see policies and Google reviews for that specific property.

Yes. Gondola is my go-to hotel search tool for both cash and point stays. The streamlined interface is easy to navigate and quickly provides the information you need to make a decision. I appreciate how fast searches are and the color-coded redemption values make the results easily scannable. No other tool shows you this level of property detail (especially for free). Seeing both the cash cost and points redemption value in the search results turns what once required multiple searches and browser windows into a fast user experience to find the best value for their points.