Busted! Hotels where celebs go to hook up

updated 11:50 a.m. ET Jan. 14, 2009

It's a wonder that, with their private homes and villas all over the world — and those staffs with strict nondisclosure clauses — famous people still engage in shameless shenanigans at world-class hotels. Sure, hotels offer a sense of anonymity, of freedom from everyday rules of behavior. But that's one thing when you're a mere mortal sneaking away for a quiet rendezvous, another thing altogether when you're, say, Jennifer Aniston.

When a celebrity is involved, everyone from the chambermaid to the business traveler staying in the next room suddenly knows that so-and-so just hooked up with what's-his-face (who's totally married!), and a night of reckless fun turns into an affair we will all remember.

But A-listers' false sense of invincibility — or perhaps their desire to turn up in the tabloids — is our gain, as we sate ourselves on tales of impropriety in posh places like the Beverly Hills Hotel or the Soho Grand. Come play along — after all, the stars already do.

1. The love nest: Soho Grand Hotel, New York City
The players: John Mayer and Jessica Simpson
The dish: John and Jessica's torrid affair was a tangled web, to say the least. But while the rest of us read the tabloids to keep up with the story line, staff at New York City's trendy Soho Grand saw it up close and personal.

In August of 2006, Us Weekly reported that Simpson booked a room there under Mayer's name, and that someone in her camp claimed the couple shacked up for two nights. Yet Mayer's people denied that he had ever visited the hotel. (The general thinking was that the recently divorced Jess was trying to score publicity by outing the relationship.)

Evan Agostini / Getty Images file Singers John Mayer and Jessica Simpson, seen here on May 7, 2007, shacked up at the Soho Grand Hotel in New York City on a few occassions while they dated.

Nonetheless, they dated publicly over the next year until May 2007, when they were rumored to have broken up. Rumored that is, until Mayer was spotted visiting Simpson's room, again in the Soho Grand (a last hurrah, perhaps?). The couple definitely parted ways after that, though OK! magazine said that they narrowly avoided a run-in at — where else? — the Soho Grand, when Simpson was a guest and Mayer was visiting someone else. Simpson reportedly dispatched her assistant to make sure the two did not come face-to-face.

2. The love nest: The Palms Casino Resort, Las Vegas
The players: Michael Phelps and the lovely ladies of the Moon Nightclub
The dish: Checking out the hired help at a nightclub generally does not qualify as a hookup — that is, unless you're Michael Phelps.

Just back from his triumphant, eight-medal run in Beijing, the swimmer took advantage of his newfound mojo with a Las Vegas trip. He was soon spotted at the Palms Casino Resort, which is kind of a hookup hunting ground for celebs. (George Clooney famously met Sarah Larson, his now ex-girlfriend, there when she was working as a cocktail waitress; Paris and Britney regularly party at the hotel as well.)

Phelps headed up to the hotel's Playboy and Moon nightclubs, which are on the top two floors, where he scored the kind of action from the scantily clad help that would normally get a patron ejected by a large bouncer.

It seems that being an American athletic hero earns you a free pass, because Phelps was as aggressive on the dance floor as he was weeks earlier in the pool. Photos show Phelps's hands freestyling all over the hard-bodied ladies' rear ends. It seems only fitting that he's now reportedly dating a Moon employee, Caroline Paz, and even brought her to meet his folks.