Generally these kind of financial website will force the browser to use SSL to prevent snooping on the data you are transmitting. It is worth always checking that sites have the little padlock though as there are "SSL stripping" type attacks. There are other types of attack that you could be vulnerable to on shared networks such as so called "man in the middle" attacks where you would actually be communicating with a hackers machine rather than the financial institution you thought you were.

All in all I would make us of a reputable VPN solution when using hotel connections. The reputable bit is important because all you are trading is trust in the hotel network (which you don't trust) for trust in the VPN. Personally I go a step further and run my own VPN but that is probably overkill!

If you are using a shared machine (rather than your own laptop) it becomes much more complicated as you have to worry about malware on that machine and also probably cannot easily setup a VPN.