Goldeneye, Jamaica
Agent 007 never did slip between the sheets at Goldeneye, former home of his creator, Ian Fleming, who borrowed the name James Bond from a West Indian ornithologist. Nor did Roger Moore or Sean Connery, though Pierce Brosnan appears in the visitors' book along with Michael Caine, Jim Carrey, Harrison Ford and Sean Lennon, Princess Margaret, Ralph Lauren, Yoko Ono et al , who've all swept through the stone gateposts of what is now a tiny luxury hotel in Jamaica's Oracabessa.
Ian Fleming arrived on the island in 1942 and wintered there until his death in 1964, writing 2,000 words a day and carousing with Noël Coward, Errol Flynn, Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene and other chums late into the night, and swimming starkers from the beach at sunrise.
Though modern features have been added - a swimming pool, for example, an alfresco tub (with gold taps, naturally), the complete collection of Bob Marley CDs by the four-poster - there is still the original chaise longue where Fleming dreamed up his plots and the desk where he wrote them. If you're not a fan, give it a wide berth.
The cost is £2,535 per night to book the whole three-bedroomed house for up to six people. This includes all meals, drinks and activities. Goldeneye, Oracabessa, St Mary, Jamaica.
Bookings through Island Outpost (00 1 876 975 3354).
Disneyland Hotel, Paris
Move over, Mickey and Minnie, enter Posh, Becks and Brooklyn as star attractions of the Disneyland Hotel, Paris. The family proved every bit as popular as the rodents in the park next door.
HQ for their recent stay was the 69-square-metre Tinkerbell Suite overlooking the Fantasia Gardens at £560 per night, for which you get a double bedroom and private lounge with convertible sofa bed. The suite also comes with 'lots of furry little animal characters' for Victoria to cuddle (just like hubby, in fact), and roses galore. Hope Brooklyn took his toothbrush - a box of chocs is among the perks.
Superannuated kiddo Michael Jackson goes one better; he stays in the 187-square-metre presidential 'Sleeping Beauty' suite, the most prestigious of all the Disneyland Hotel suites, with views of Main Street, USA and La Belle au Bois Dormant, which costs £2,000 a night and comes with a grand piano, dining-room for 10 guests and private lounge with fireplace.
Contact Disneyland Resort Paris Suites Department (00 33 1 603 06090)
Royal Palm Hotel, Mauritius
Did Nelson Mandela ponder the affairs of state as he gazed over the Indian Ocean from his Jacuzzi-with-a-view in the 320-square- metre Royal Suite? Does Jacques Chirac, a regular, order a mahi-mahi burger or a smoked marlin sandwich via the suite's per sonal valet? Or does Boris Becker try the walk-in his'n'hers wardrobes for size? The rest of us would probably settle for chilling out on the private beach or pool, trying to guess the value of the Oriental antiques and Persian carpets, and nicking all the posh unguents in the bathroom.
Whatever celebs or plebs get up to at the Royal Palm won't get out: confidentiel is how the French describe the understated Mauritian hotel which has all the trappings of gracious living, with three staff to each guest, but strictly no discos or OK! snappers, though guests have included Baby Spice, Mick Jagger, Phil Collins and It girl Tamara Beckwith. And you don't need to check in via the lobby; they'll take your vital statistics in your suite.
The Royal Suite with three bedrooms costs £1,758 per night B&B.
Contact Beachcomber in the UK (01483 533 008).
Lake Palace Hotel, Udaipur, India
Best known as the location for the James Bond film, Octopussy, the Lake Palace, shimmering in the middle of Udaipur's Lake Pichola, is often described as one of the world's most beautiful and romantic hotels. It was built - it is claimed - by the young Maharana Jahat Sing II as a pleasure palace for moonlight picnics for the ladies of his zenana or harem. Opening its brass-studded doors as a hotel in 1963, it is still a fairy-tale fantasy of exquisite marble inlaid with semi-precious stones, surrounded by ornamental gardens that echo with the whispers of trysts.
Was it folie de grandeur or just love that inspired dour Yorkshireman William Hague to book the Sajjan Niwas Suite for his honeymoon with Ffion? It's a gilded Arabian Nights-stage set of arches, frescoed walls and ceilings, white marble floors covered with Persian carpets and views to die for.
The Sajjan Niwas Suite costs from $632.50 (£405) per night, room only.
For Taj reservations in the UK phone 0800 282 699.
The Lancaster, Paris
Though she'd wrinkle her rather long nose at the madding crowds swirling round the burger bars, car showrooms and cinemas that now make up the Champs Elysées on the Lancaster's doorstep, Marlene Dietrich could still sleep sweetly under her own portrait in suite 45, her Parisian home for three years in the 1930s.
More than a century after her birth, the room remains intact, cluttered with antique objets d'art (large Louis XV desk, Chinese porcelain showcase, eighteenth-century carved armchairs). It overlooks the Zen-inspired courtyard where she could spy on whoever might be breakfasting or lunching alfresco - the ghosts of John Steinbeck, Greta Garbo (rumour has it she was Dietrich's lover here), Noël Coward or Grace Kelly or, nowadays, Ewan McGregor in the flesh. Unlikely to be corporate businessmen or anyone so naff. Tucked away so discreetly that taxi drivers often miss it, this raffish hotel, forerunner of the townhouse and boutique hotel, is too much like an exclusive club.
Gawpers who stray into its hallowed lobby (more like an English drawing-room) are given a polite but firm brush-off. The spirit of Dietrich lives on...
Suite 45 costs about £675 per night.
Contact Hotel Lancaster, 7 Rue de Berri, Champs Elysées, 75008 Paris (00 33 1 4076 4076).
The Hoste Arms, Burnham Market, Norfolk
Not many Victorian guests would have wanted to be named on their visits to the Hoste Arms in Norfolk's Burnham Market where it used to do a brisk trade as a brothel. The sixteenth-century inn certainly has a touch of previous - it has also been a livestock market, court and post office (Admiral Nelson would ride over every Saturday to collect his dispatches between 1787-1792).
The busy hub of one of England's prettiest villages, its salty-sweaters-and-wellies image pulls the twenty-first century inn-crowd with a vengeance - Amanda Holden and Les Dennis, Stephen Fry and Caroline Quentin are regulars. 'All very proper nowadays,' says ebullient owner Paul Whittome wistfully. 'But we do have a Red Room with a naughty red four-poster, and we'll serve breakfast as late as the guests want.'
Two-night B&B weekends cost £272 per couple in the Red Room, two nights' midweek half-board cost £224.
Contact The Hoste Arms, The Green, Burnham Market, Norfolk PE31 8HP (01328 738 777).
Grand Hotel Excelsior Vittoria, Sorrento
It's one of the great prima donnas of Italian hotels - the visitors' book at Sorrento's Grand Hotel Excelsior Vittoria reads like Who's Who, with Pavarotti, Wagner, Goethe, Sophia Loren and British royalty, to name just a few of the entries.
Caruso lived there briefly in 1921 and the suite named after him has been kept in the same style, with antique bed, Louis XVI-style furniture, a ceiling like the Sistine Chapel and his own piano on which he belted out 'Torna' translated as 'Come Back to Sorrento'. It was the song that put the resort on the modern tourist map.
Princess Margaret, who knew a thing or two about holidaying in style, was also a frequent visitor to the Excelsior Vittoria: subtle and sophisticated is how the hotel likes to describe the suite Princess Margaret used, with its mellow, cream tones, desk, sofa for entertaining and luminous white bathroom.
The Caruso Room costs around €850 (£533) per night.
Contact Grand Hotel Excelsior Vittoria (0800 969765).
Rajvilas Hotel, Jaipur, India
When peripatetic William J. Clinton and daughter Chelsea stayed in the Royal Suite of Jaipur's Rajvilas Hotel (voted hotel of the year by a glossy magazine), 200 extra phone lines and five helipads were moved in and other hotel guests moved out, though the mega-suite itself could probably have accommodated the entire Senate.
Reached by a filigree marble drawbridge over a moat, the suite's brass-studded doors open on to a series of arches, canopies, terrace and swimming pool with mattresses to loll on in the jasmine-scented air. This is glittery Indian Ideal Home style at its most discreet and restrained. But note the details; marble urns of scented potpourri, silver mirrors and chandeliers, leather-bound volumes, priceless rugs, hand-carved cornices.
Not all guests, however, get the special treat placed with the chef's compliments for the President in his villa - a homemade apple pie. 'He asked us for another one, a larger size,' the hotel says reverently.
The Royal Villa at Rajvilas sleeps four and costs $1,500 (about £960) per night.
Contact Oberoi Hotels (020 7222 0606).
· All prices are on a B&B basis unless otherwise stated.
