Gondola: Compelling hotel award search tool, but with an email problem

Gondola is a free tool designed to make it easy to find hotels that offer the best value for your points or for cash. In the short time I’ve spent with it, it has already become my go-to tool for hotel trip-planning. I love that it not only shows cents per point for each hotel in its search results but that it also lets you sort by point-value (not just by point price or cents per point like other tools). When clicking into a hotel, Gondola shows a wealth of really useful information to help you decide whether or not to book that hotel. And, best of all, Gondola promises to alert you if any stays you booked drop in price (via cash or points) regardless of whether you booked them through Gondola.

Overview

At its core, Gondola is a useful hotel search tool. When you search for hotels, Gondola shows prices both in cash and in points, along with Google review scores. For points bookings, it also shows cents per point and whether or not that’s a good value. When you click into a specific hotel, the tool offers an incredible amount of information including the typical cash price and point price ranges for this hotel; benefits you can expect based on your elite status; user reviews; hotel policies; and fees (including resort fees, if any).

Gondola is designed to give you personalized recommendations and information. If you give it access to the email address that you use for all of your loyalty accounts, it automatically figures out your current point balance and elite status for each program. Further, it catalogs all of your past and future trips (at least those that have already been booked). Gondola is able to use this information when recommending hotels. For example, if you have a history of staying in a particular hotel brand, it may be more likely to recommend that same brand in new cities. Or if two hotels are equal in other ways, Gondola might first suggest the one where you have elite status. Gondola also offers an AI driven Explore feature which lets you find hotels based on open-ended queries. And, of course, the AI can use what the tool knows about you to make better recommendations. Gondola also uses your information to alert you to hotel price drops even if you didn’t book the stay through Gondola. All of that sounds fantastic, but I’m NOT a fan of the way they rely on email access to achieve these goals.

The email problem

When signing up for Gondola, the site requires you to give it access to your Google or Microsoft email account. Many tools do this just for authentication, and I think that’s great. The problem here is that it needs you to authorize it to read your emails. It does this in order to learn all about your loyalty memberships and past trips so that it can make personalized hotel recommendations. This bugs me for three reasons:

1. It’s a security risk. I don’t like to give services access to my email inbox because I think it opens up a huge security hole: Many rewards programs and bank accounts let you click “forgot my password” and will send a reset to your email address on file. Bad actors could use this to hack into your accounts. Obviously I don’t think that Gondola is going to do anything nefarious, but I’d rather not be forced to trust them.
2. It’s incomplete. I use a single email address for most loyalty programs, but not all. Gondola can’t see the other ones. Additionally, not all programs email all of the information that Gondola wants (such as current point balances).
3. It’s sometimes wrong. I took a chance and gave Gondola access to my primary email. It now thinks that I’ve taken trips that I once booked and then cancelled. It also thinks I’ve taken trips that I’ve booked for others. The tool also shows me my future trips, some of which seem to have come out of nowhere. (update: since writing this, I’ve deleted this account and created a new one using a junk email address).

I’ve discussed the security issue with the tool’s founder and he says that they’re working on some alternatives. In the meantime, if you’re concerned about security, the best option is to sign up with a junk email address that has never been used with important accounts. In the comments, EugeneV points out a particularly good solution:

Create a dedicated Gmail account for this purpose. Then set up a forwarding rule from your main account(s) to this account, of any email sent from supported hotel domains. Voila!

A great thing about Eugene’s solution is that it can also solve the problem of having multiple email addresses for loyalty accounts. You can forward each of them to your dedicated Gondola email address. If you set up a forwarding rule, though, it’s important to make sure to only include emails that have your trip details and not any that have security codes or links to reset your password.

Gondola “cash back”

When you make cash bookings, you’ll earn Gondola Cash Back (which can be used towards future bookings). Unlike most other online travel agencies, these reservations are booked directly with the hotel so that you can manage your stay directly with the hotel chain and you can earn hotel points and elite credits.

The thing I don’t like about Gondola “cash back” is that it can only be used for future bookings. Personally, I’d prefer to find a portal that offers points or real cash back and click through there to the specific hotel chain to book my stay. As long as you don’t book through an online travel agency, you’ll still earn your hotel points and elite credits that way.

Price drop alerts

Gondola uses its email integration to monitor which trips you book (even if you book outside of Gondola) and watches for price drops. You should get alerted if the cash rate or point price drops from the amount you paid. You can then rebook the stay for less.

I have not had a chance to test this feature yet, but it would be fantastic if it works well!

No availability alerts

Other hotel award search tools let you set up alerts so that you’ll be notified when a hotel you’re interested in becomes available to book with points. Gondola doesn’t do that. My approach is to search for currently available hotels through Gondola, but to switch to another tool like Rooms.aero to set alerts for hotels that I want to watch for availability.

Why this tool is worth a look

Point Value

Gondola is the only tool I know of that lets me sort hotel results by point-value. Awayz lets me sort by points, and PointsYeah lets me sort by cents per point, but neither is particularly helpful when looking at hotels from multiple award programs. Hilton points, Marriott points, Hyatt points, etc. are on different scales. Sorting by number of points or even by cents per point doesn’t make sense when comparing across these programs. Imagine, for example, if Hilton reported their cash costs in number of pennies, Marriott in nickels, and Hyatt in quarters. Then, if a tool let you sort by the number of coins each hotel costs, Hyatt is going to come out on top every time as the cheapest (as in requiring the fewest coins) even though it may be more expensive when you convert each hotel’s cost to dollars.

When sorting hotels in Gondola by point-value, Gondola uses its point-value estimates to compare apples-to-apples. And while their point values may not match my own, they’re far better than simply using the point-cost for sorting. The hotels that sort to the top really are the ones that offer the best value for my points.

Detailed Information

When clicking into a specific hotel, Gondola shows a wealth of information that I find really useful. One example is that they show a chart with the typical cash and cents per point ranges they’ve found at this hotel. This way, at a glance you can see if you’d be getting a good deal compared to usual prices for this hotel:

How to sign up

Gondola is free to use. If you’re concerned about the email issues that I described above, I recommend using a junk email account when signing up. This will let you try out Gondola’s excellent hotel search features but without personalized recommendations or price drop alerts. If you later want those other features, you can forward your hotel emails to that junk account.

Click here to sign up for Gondola (Disclosure: Frequent Miler will earn a commission on paid bookings if you sign up through this link)

The post Gondola: Compelling hotel award search tool, but with an email problem appeared first on Frequent Miler. Frequent Miler may receive compensation from CHASE. American Express, Capital One, or other partners.