Confusion arises because there are two different ways to book a hotel through sites like Expedia and Travelocity. You can simply make a reservation through an online agency and pay at the property, in which case you are likely to receive hotel status recognition and rewards credit. However, if you make a prepaid reservation you are buying the room nights from the travel agency, and are unlikely to receive recognition or credit because the hotel sees it as a wholesale transaction. Again, programs policies differ and practice sometimes diverges from policy.
This happened to me at an Intercontinental, the Mark Hopkins in SFO. To use my Travelocity credit to pay for the stay, it had to be booked as prepaid. Thus the hotel saw it as a wholesale trransaction with Travelocity and I was treated as dirt!. I didn't even get the room type I was guaranteed in writing when I made the reservation.
I have both the legacy Travelocity and the C1 Venture cards. I will only use my Travelocity card to purchase flights via Travelocity as I will get 8% credit. It has been my experience that airlines don't differentiate based on purchase channel. Everything else goes on my C1 card.