Does booking La Quinta via Southwest automatically make you earn Southwest credit (now points)?

La Quinta, unlike other hotel programs, does not allow you to set up your preference ahead of time (online or otherwise) to always earn Southwest (or any other airline), unless they've change very recently. You have to provide your number at check-in every time, and sometimes there's the risk they won't put in correctly, because you get no printed confirmation. Thus with La Quinta, and La Quinta alone, I would see a benefit to booking via southwest.com if that meant that automatically (without me having to present my Southwest number in person at checkin and then wonder if it "took") I would get Southwest credits/points.

But is that how it really works?

... Btw, MelonKing, one reason for asking for your hotel program # is that some hotel programs don't give you airline miles if it's not your preference in your hotel program #. So perhaps southwest.com forces the preference at some programs, but needs the hotel # to do that? In that case, the hotel # would be to help you earn Southwest creidts/points, not to allow double dipping (outside of Hilton HHonors).

(To clarify: I used "credits/points" throughout this post because I'm referring to the past as well the present/future. Obviously, now and in the future, you can only earn RR 2.0 points.)