You can try, but I've never gotten it to truly work across various brands I stay with. No one has ever awarded points. They might give you a parking benefit, maybe a breakfast one.

The properties fundamentally don't like OTA bookings.

That being said I booked a stay yesterday where booking directly through the hotels website would have cost me about $100 more than the OTA I used.

This property didn't show up in Connexions but was available in other big OTA's.

So note that the platform itself is fairly cramped in their selection.

So as long as properties are unable to manage their pricing, customers will keep on using agents.

And that's not even counting that some OTA's have their own loyalty programs and that one can typically get a small portal kickback too.