End of June was approaching.
The Experiment
For four weeks I waited for almost $600 of Hilton Aspire resort credits to appear after dining at the Waldorf Astoria Las Vegas without staying there.
The experiment took place at the Waldorf Astoria Las Vegas, despite never booking a room.
They never did.
As the end of the first half approached, I reached the point where waiting any longer carried its own cost. Continue hoping the credits would eventually appear, or accept that the experiment had probably failed and use those credits somewhere else before they expired.
I’ve now made that decision. Before explaining it, it’s worth looking at why this particular grey area exists in the first place.
The Grey Area
Hilton has gradually made it easier to earn credits than it has to use them.
The Hilton Surpass and Amex Business Platinum cards now offer quarterly credits that can be used at any Hilton property worldwide. The Aspire card includes Free Night Certificates redeemable throughout the Hilton portfolio, together with two $200 resort credits each year that can only be used at properties on Hilton’s designated resort list.
That’s all well and good if your travel naturally takes you to qualifying resorts twice each year.
Some live in places where there simply aren’t any eligible properties. The UK, Ireland and the Nordic countries, for example, have no hotels at all on Hilton’s Aspire resort list. Others deliberately direct their stays towards Marriott or Hyatt while working on status elsewhere, returning to Hilton later in the year. From Hilton’s perspective that’s almost the point of these recurring credits (see my article Why Amex Keeps Adding More Credits): to encourage those on the margin to swing their business back towards Hilton.
In those types of situation, people start asking whether hotel restaurants, bars and spas can be used without actually staying at the property.
A Community Built on Datapoints
The number of people trying to answer that question is remarkable.
Reddit, FlyerTalk and other travel forums contain thousands of datapoints discussing which Hilton restaurants trigger credits, which spas work, and which transactions don’t behave quite as expected. There is even a community-maintained Google spreadsheet collecting reports, together with an independently developed Aspire resort credit tracker. I can’t personally verify either resource, so I’d treat them as useful starting points rather than definitive references, but their existence tells you something important. Plenty of people find themselves holding valuable credits with no obvious way to use them.
That broader question also became the motivation behind my own series on using Hilton credits abroad. Along the way I found that restaurants inside Hilton hotels don’t all behave the same. Some code simply as restaurants, helping with dining multipliers on other cards but not Hilton-specific benefits. Others code fully as Hilton spend. Every additional datapoint helps build a clearer picture.
An Earlier Waldorf Astoria Datapoint
This wasn’t actually my first experiment involving the Waldorf Astoria Las Vegas.
Towards the end of 2025 I made two prepaid, fully refundable bookings while stacking Amex Offers on two Platinum cards. One offer gave $100 back on Hilton spend in Nevada, while the other gave $200 back on Waldorf Astoria stays. In both cases the offers triggered almost immediately. In both cases I later cancelled the reservations. One cancellation happened just over two weeks later, while the other happened more than five weeks later, crossing both a statement cycle and a calendar year.
Both Amex Offers reversed.
That doesn’t tell us anything about Hilton Aspire resort credits, but it does answer another question that had circulated online. In my case, prepaid refundable bookings at the Waldorf Astoria Las Vegas did not preserve Amex Offers after cancellation, even after waiting more than five weeks.
In the end I cancelled because, even after applying the offers, the economics simply weren’t compelling enough. Bellagio comps and other alternatives represented better value, even if that meant giving up the Amex Offers.
Dining Without Staying
A few months later I found myself back in Las Vegas, this time staying next door at Aria on a largely comped MGM stay.
Rather than booking the Waldorf Astoria, my wife and I decided to experience two of its best-known venues without staying there. One evening we booked Hard Shake.
The following afternoon we returned to Peacock Alley for tea with our daughter.
Peacock Alley sits alongside, and shares some of the same space with Hard Shake.
Hard Shake came to $310.67, split across two Aspire cards. One transaction was exactly $200, with the balance charged to a second card. Both transactions earned the full Aspire card 14x Hilton multiplier and appeared as:
May 28
WALDORF ASTORIA LV S LAS VEGAS NV — $200
WALDORF ASTORIA LV S LAS VEGAS NV — $110.67
Hard Shake overlooks the Las Vegas Strip from the 23rd floor of the Waldorf Astoria.
The following day Peacock Alley came to $284.59, again split across two Aspire cards. Those transactions also earned the full Aspire card 14x Hilton multiplier, this time appearing as:
May 29
WALDORF ASTORIA LV T LAS VEGAS NV — $200
WALDORF ASTORIA LV T LAS VEGAS NV — $84.59
The only obvious difference between the two merchant descriptions was the “S” and “T” identifier. Everything else suggested the transactions were coding exactly as Hilton spend.
The Result
Now it is a month since those visits. Every transaction triggered Hilton points almost immediately, confirming that they were recognised as Hilton spend. None of the corresponding Aspire resort credits, however, have appeared.
That’s the interesting distinction: A purchase can quite clearly qualify as Hilton spend for the purposes of earning Hilton points, and can be at an otherwise eligible property, but without necessarily qualifying for the Aspire resort credit.
Could the credits still appear? Of course. American Express credits occasionally take longer than expected. But after four weeks, and with the end of the first half approaching, I no longer felt it sensible to continue assuming that they would.
Would I Have Made the Purchase Anyway?
This is really the question that determines whether any of this is useful.
If I had known with 100% certainty that the Aspire resort credits would never post, would I still have spent the money?
For Hard Shake, absolutely.
This is the sort of evening I would happily have paid for even without the Aspire credits.
Spending around $300 on good food and drinks including a bottle of bubbles and one of the best night-time views in Las Vegas is exactly the sort of evening I enjoy. Sitting by the window watching the Strip light up is something I’d happily repeat regardless of whether any credits ever appeared. Looking back, I don’t really think of that spend as part of this experiment at all.
Peacock Alley was different.
Afternoon tea at Peacock Alley was enjoyable, but probably not something I’d have chosen without the possibility of the Aspire credits.
It was enjoyable, and it was nice to share the experience with our daughter, but I only realised afterwards how much of the physical space it shares with Hard Shake.
Peacock Alley in the evening, looking out across the Strip.
The reception sits within Peacock Alley, the kitchen appears to be shared, and much of the service seemed to flow between the two. Living in London much of the year, afternoon tea isn’t something I travel to Las Vegas to experience, and if I’m honest it isn’t really my thing anyway. The sandwiches were excellent and several of the desserts were very good, although a few of the richer cakes were simply more than we wanted.
Had I known with complete certainty that no Aspire credits would ever post, I almost certainly wouldn’t have spent close to $300 there.
That’s the real value of this datapoint. Not whether the afternoon tea was good, but whether certainty about the credits would have changed the spending decision.
One Last Experiment
For practical purposes, I’ve treated the experiment as finished.
The end of the first half is approaching, so it’s more important that I put my remaining Aspire resort credits to work elsewhere than continue waiting for an increasingly unlikely outcome.
Almost all of those credits have now been used elsewhere.
Almost.
One Aspire card happened to contain charges from both Hard Shake and Peacock Alley. Rather than using the remaining resort credit in full, I deliberately left about $7 unused.
The thinking is simple. If one of those Waldorf Astoria transactions eventually triggers a belated Aspire resort credit, even many weeks from now, I’ll know the experiment ultimately succeeded and that the other transactions almost certainly would have qualified as well.
If nothing ever appears, that’s a datapoint too. Spending $7 to buy certainty feels like a reasonable investment. Several hundred dollars did not.