1. Yes
2. Depends on the hotel/brand
.
ETA: I suppose I should also point out here that ctrip/trip rates can be used to trigger price matches from Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt, etc, BUT the matchers tend want everything to be exactly the same (e.g. even if the Queen Suite With River View and the Queen Suite with City View are the same price, that's still considered apples to oranges). Furthermore, at least Hilton only matches rates offered when you aren't logged in; the flipside of this is that you don't need to log into Hilton either (where your HHonors discount would be applied) for the comparison. This hoop jumping is sufficiently annoying for me only to bother with it when there is biggish money at stake, but I don't really care that much about hotel status.