When actress Mary Steenburgen dished about her favorite hotels in a recent interview with the Baltimore Sun, we were all ears (or, more accurately, eyes). Among her favorites are well-known hotels in some of the vacation destinations we love visiting most, including London, San Francisco, Santa Fe and Maui.

But even more than the actress’s take on the hotels lucky enough to make her list of favorites, we were curious to discover what TravelPoster hotel reviewers would have to say about them. After all, it’s gotta be easier to see the best side of a hotel when you’re a celebrity.

Below, we list Steenburgen’s favorite hotels alongside overall impressions from travelers who’ve visited and reviewed these properties on TravelPost.

Hotel Hana Maui: TravelPost reviewers who’ve visited report good things about this Maui hotel, from beautiful rooms in the seaside cottages to attractively landscaped grounds and a top-notch spa. Most reviews are glowing, though

Covent Garden Hotel: Located in central London, this hotel wins praise from those who’ve stayed there for its solid location near the Tube, helpful staff and upscale interiors. That said, its overall ranking is just a 3 out of 5.

The Huntington Hotel: This San Francisco hotel receives high marks from TravelPost reviewers, thanks to its central location in the posh Nob Hill neighborhood, great spa, on site fine dining restaurant The Big Four and historic past. Some guests complain about rooms being outdated and encountering issues with service.

La Posada de Santa Fe Resort and Spa: Overall, TravelPosters give this one a thumbs-down, largely due to problems with service and extra fees. To be fair, many who’ve stayed here mention that it’s a beautiful property in a convenient location to Santa Fe’s plaza.

Hotels are rolling out summer promotions in droves these days. Among major hotel chains, giving away free nights seems to be the favorite way to entice would-be guests right now. Here are three ways to earn free nights at hotels for summer 2009 travel:

InterContinental Hotels: The Biggest Free Nights Offer from InterContinental offers Priority Club Rewards members who register a free night at a participating hotel when they stay any two nights between now and July 3, 2009. Free nights are good for use through Dec. 26, 2009 at hotels around the world (though not in Japan, for some reason). Travelers can earn up to four nights.

Radisson Hotels & Resorts: The Friday is Freeday offer is good through Sept. 15 and allows guests to stay free on Friday nights when they book either a Thursday or Saturday night at participating properties in the Americas, Asia and in the UK, including the Radisson Edwardian Bloomsbury Street Hotel pictured above. The stay must be booked at least seven days in advance, and the offer is only good for standard accommodations, but other than that – there are few restrictions.

Marriott: Members of the Marriott Rewards program can earn free nights when they stay in participating Marriott hotels three times or more this summer. To be eligible, members must register by June 30 and complete three separate stays at participating hotels (there are 3,000+ to choose from) by Aug. 31. The free nights can be used anytime until the end of the year.

If you plan to book any of these promotions, keep in mind that it’s always a good idea to check directly with the hotel to make sure it’s a participating property and that your stay will qualify under the promotion terms.

Oh yes, there’s more where these came from. Keep reading the TravelPost Insider for noteworthy hotel deals….

Staycations are, like, so last summer, according to the Annual Summer Travel Survey by our sister site Kayak.com. Of the 4,100 people in this year’s survey, an impressive 95 percent said they plan to travel this summer. And while travelers remain concious of the economy, more than 41 percent of respondants said the recession would not affect their summer travel plans in any way.

Why the enthusiam for travel this summer? For one thing, lower airfares and frequent fare sales are making it more affordable to fly in ‘09, while an abundance of travel deals are taking some of the burden off lodging at resorts and hotels.

For summer trips, major U.S. cities and European countries are among the most popular destinations, while domestic beaches and the Caribbean are close runners up.

Even though they plan to travel this summeer, travelers say they are embracing all the cost-saving strategies they can find. To help travelers stay on top of extra fees and find the best deals available, Kayak has launched new tools that include a baggage fee calculator to instantly add additional fees and update airfare prices on its search results page, a hotel rate calendar that shows the average daily rate over the last two months for any of its 197,000+ hotels and an option to select the airports you want searched when you look for airfare.

Along with its own travel tools, Kayak offered up the following tips and reminders for recession-proofing your summer 2009 vacation:

- Try a cruise if you’re looking for a serious bargain

- The Caribbean offers many deals during summer months

- Visiting Europe is much cheaper this summer now that fuel surcharges are gone and the dollar is strengthening against the Euro and British Pound

For more ways to save, try Kayak.com tools such as Kayak Flexible Search, Weekend Search, Buzz Calendar, Airfare History charts and Fare Alert tracker.

Keep reading the TravelPost.com Insider’s deals section for more ways to save on your summer 2009 travel….

The Dorchester certainly can’t lay claim to being one of London’s hippest hotels (the decor is decidedly old school and buttoned-up), but it’s unquestionably one of the UK city’s poshest places to stay. Not surprisingly, celebrities flock here when London’s calling. The latest example? Britney Spears.

For her hotly-anticipated return to London as part of The Circus tour, Spears has chosen the hotel as her home base. That much shouldn’t raise an eyebrow. But the list of requests Spears reportedly sent to the hotel in advance of her stay is getting attention all its own this week since it was leaked to the press.

Among Spears’ supposed requirements:

- A room that’s never housed a smoker (good luck on that – it’s been around almost 80 years)

- Multiple humidifiers

- Chick lit

- Marilyn Monroe movies

- Multiple routes to and from the hotel in order to avoid the paps

All in all, fairly reasonable requests, don’t you think? Perhaps the funniest thing we read is that the singer might check in under the assumed name Sugar Kane (after Marilyn in Some Like it Hot). But then, subtlety has never been her strong suit…..

Keep reading the TravelPost Insider for more celebrity travel news….

One of the most prominent trends in hotels these days also happens to be one of the riskiest guest-pleasing gambles to hit the travel industry in the last decade. Open bathrooms are increasingly common in hotels around the world, but, as the New York Times points out, the allure of such a room feature shifts dramatically depending on the circumstances. Traveling solo? Why not bask in the freedom of an open bathroom with transparent glass walls? But when you’re an adult sharing the room with dear old dad…not so much. Even for many couples, see-through walls and exposed toilets offer a little too much information.

While some hotels boast about their bare-it-all bathrooms, just what kind you’ll encounter upon arrival is often a mystery that unravels only after check-in.

Here, a handful of hotels with open bathrooms and their various features:

Hotel le Germain – A shade with automatic blinds (pictured above) allows guests at the Toronto hotel to gaze into the bedroom from the bathroom, while a transparent glass wall separates bathroom and bedroom and leaves the shower visible from the main room.

The Tides – This Miami hotel offers glass showers that are visible from the bedrooms.

Radisson Edwardian Leicester Square – This London hotel offers rooms with glass-walled bathrooms.

Renaissance Beijing Hotel – The bathrooms at this Beijing hotel have glass walls and exposed toilets.

Sanderson Hotel - Bathrooms entirely encased in glass walls let guests see it all at this trendy London hotel.

Mandarin Oriental Miami – Some rooms have glass walls that leave the toilet visible from the bedroom.

Have you stayed at a hotel with an open bathroom? Why not review it for us?

The No Kissing and Kissing Zone signs that drummed up a ton of press when they appeared earlier this year in a UK train station are being taken down and auctioned off on eBay.

Placed on the walls at Warrington Bank Quay Station in Cheshire, the signs were apparently intended to curb an increase in delays and congestion due to overly amorous passengers killing time on the platform by locking lips. Passengers with insatiable urges were instructed to visit a separate kissing zone in the outdoor parking lot nearby. Even more hilarious, the kissing zone was marked with a sign announcing a 20-minute kissing limit.

The signs are priced at $48, and proceeds will benefit UK non-profit Red Nose Day. The auction ends Friday.

While we’re betting that few travelers out there particularly enjoy the airport check-in process, we’re not so sure they’d like to see it go the way of the dinosaur. In the coming year, we’ll have a chance to see just what airline passengers think about airports without check-in desks as we watch low-cost carrier Ryanair attempt to do away with them in favor of a strictly online model.

By the end of 2009, the airline says it hopes to have eliminated check-in desks at all of the airports where it operates. Instead, travelers will have to check-in online before heading to the airport. Drop-off locations will be in place to collect checked luggage.

It’s certainly not a feasible option for major carriers servicing passengers with complex itineraries each day, but it is a tactic that may very well work for Ryanair, which estimates some three-quarters of its customers already use the Internet to check-in for their flights.

[Source: Ryanair to Cut all Airport Check-In Desks]

[Photo: Andres Reuda]

- Delta reports that it is adding wi-fi at a pace of five planes per week.

- Ryanair now allows passengers to make really expensive in-flight cell phone calls.

- You might need a vacation if you’ve done one of these things recently.

- One California hotel is offering free rooms to the unemployed.

- If you think airport security lacks humor, you obviously haven’t heard the one about the about the Swiss pilot who dropped trou at a checkpoint recently.

- Yes, apparently you can actually score a (decent) hotel room in New York City for under $100.

- Need a job? There are still a few days left to apply for the Best Job in the World, a six-month stint as a paid caretaker of an Australian island (pictured).

If there’s anything travelers the world over relish, it’s good advice. You’ll find just that in Travel+Leisure’s 9 Money-Saving Travel Tips. Along with sage travel advice for the year ahead (like opting for one of the many heavily discounted cruises available right now to early bookers or choosing a travel package instead of purchasing a la carte), other good-to-know nuggets highlighted in the article are far more specific, but no less helpful:

- Starwood Hotels is offering a 2nd night at 50 percent off promotion good at select properties, including those in its Luxury Collection, W and Le Meridien.

- Silversea Cruises is upping the ante this year and offering free airfare to those who book their cruise before April.

- To encourage travel, many major hotel loyalty programs have eliminated blackout dates. The list includes Hilton, Hyatt, Marriott and Starwood.

- London is 20 percent “more affordable” for U.S. travelers this year, thanks to weakening British currency.

[Source: via CNN]

If it’s a relaxing Caribbean vacation you seek, let’s hope you don’t end up at the same resort as Amy Winehouse. At the moment, that would be The Body Holiday at LeSPORT on St. Lucia, where the long-troubled and supposedly-recovering British singer has reportedly decided to vacation for the next two months.

During her stay thus far, we hear from UK paper The Sun that Winehouse has been raising eyebrows for sneakily stealing other guests’ drinks, strumming her guitar from her balcony at odd hours and while topless and generally making an arse of herself through various outbursts:

A source at the £200-a-night resort said: “We keep catching her crawling past bars, or hiding behind chairs. She grabs guests’ drinks and runs off, like a squirrel with a nut.”

Now that’s classy. Of course, it’s certainly an improvement over, um, crack.