The business traveller’s search for cheaper hotel accommodation has helped to fuel a near doubling of the UK budget hotel market since 2000, pushing its turn-over beyond £1bn.

Whitbread’s Premier Travel Inn and Dubai International Capital’s Travelodge have provided much of the supply growth, the number of extra rooms increasing by about 8,000 rooms a year on average so far this decade.

Last year, the top two each added 2,000 rooms, compared with French-based Accor’s 449 rooms and Express by Holiday Inn with 356, according to research by TRI Hospitality Consulting.

Those numbers demonstrate the fierce competition for sites that is marginalising other much smaller brands such as Formule 1, Campanile and Tulip Inn.

A budget hotel room is up to 22 sq m, compared with up to 42 sq m for a three- or four-star room. Total hotel construction costs are about half those for mid-market hotels. EasyHotels’ windowless rooms are 10 sq m.

The UK budget hotel market has 1,171 hotels and 85,665 rooms. Premier Travel Inn has 38.2 per cent of the UK market, compared with 22.6 per cent and 12.9 per cent for Express by Holiday Inn, but there are 25 brands in the UK, down to Sleeperz’s single 27-room hotel.

Business guests generated 57m room nights last year, up from 38m in 2004, while the leisure market has more than doubled to 54m.

The country with the highest percentage of all-hotel business guests who used a branded budget hotel last year was France, with 55 per cent, followed by Ireland, Norway and then the UK, on 39 per cent. In 2000, the UK figure was 27 per cent.

But after outperforming the full-service hotel sector in occupancy, budget hotel occupancy rates are only marginally higher than their bigger counterparts, reflecting the overall strength of the UK market.