The Q1 2026 benchmarking report for UK budget hotels has just been published. Learn how the top 12 UK budget hotels perform across the digital space. 

The latest Q1 2026 benchmarking report for UK budget hotels has just been published. It covers the largest 12 UK budget hotels, including Premier Inn, Travelodge, YHA, Greene King Inns, Britannia Hotels, Wetherspoon Hotels, Innkeeper's Collection, The Inn Collection, Coaching Inn Group, Cairn Hotel Group, EasyHotel, and The Z Hotels.

The research gives an inside track on who is winning the biggest share of voice online and quantifies the gaps, risks, and missed opportunities for other budget hotels to win brand exposure, drive traffic online, and even increase in-store footfall, where relevant. The report highlights quick wins that will improve enquiries from your online strategy and identifies the barriers that may be reducing your site’s ability to optimise digital performance.

To see a preview and contents page of the Q1 report, click here. To get a copy of the full report and the key takeaways, please complete the enquiry form or schedule a call.

Q1 2026 WINNERS LEADERBOARD

For a glance into just 6 of the metrics, we evaluated these top 12 UK budget hotels, check out our quick-look table below:

 To understand what the *CTM Digital Performance Index™ is click here.  

Continue reading for further detail on this quarter's best and poorest-performing UK budget hotels or request a copy of the report for the full review.

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What The Industry Research Report Covers

The 70+ pages of research benchmarks each site based on 50+ metrics and indicators of successful digital strategy, including organic visibility, domain authority, paid media ads, conversion performance, technical performance, site speed, universal search, content, social ads, accessibility, and mobile performance.  

Driving Optimal ROAS from Paid Media Channels

Some of the leading players in the space are high spenders on paid media channels such as Google, Bing & Facebook - but have a poor or sub-optimal conversion improvement strategy. Without an optimised, sophisticated conversion strategy that maximises the conversion rate, the return on investment is unsustainable or will under-perform. Scaling spend on paid media is not achievable unless the conversion rate delivers optimal performance in the sector. Some in the space have paid media spend levels from 30k+ per month but dedicate minimal resources and budgets to conversion testing.  Given the cost per clicks on ad networks will continue to rise, we recommend spending at least 10% of your paid media budget on ongoing conversion optimisation testing schedules to ensure your paid media ROI maintains long term viability, competitive advantage, and sustainability.

Pay-Per-Click Marketing

Pay-Per-Click marketing is constantly evolving, with more and more advertisers being forced to hand over a lot of control to Google's algorithms as the push for automation grows ever stronger. There are still key elements of control that we have though, the main one of these being budget which is ultimately something the algorithms can't take from you. That's why being smart with your budget and ad coverage is essential to achieving strong results and bettering what your competitors have to offer.

For Q1 2026, the average monthly budget wastage across these UK budget hotels was £68,092 with some of the top players in the market spending a considerable amount on areas and audiences unlikely to deliver a return. We can see this in more detail when looking at the average monthly cost per cost-per-click (CPC) amongst advertisers, with the average of this metric being £8. This highlights how competitive the market is and how important it is to control your budgets effectively.

There are varying monthly ad budgets across the competitors in the report. While this gap highlights the competitive advantage that larger budgets can provide, it's not just about spending more; it’s about spending smarter. By focusing on driving efficiency in campaign management, targeting, and budget allocation, businesses with smaller budgets can still effectively compete with larger players. Investing in data-driven strategies and refining ad performance can help close the gap and maximise the return on every pound spent, enabling growth even in a competitive landscape.  Relative to their spend, The Z Hotels reported the lowest monthly cost-per-click (CPC) at £0, and Innkeeper's Collection has the highest at £37.

The report highlights the importance of budget efficiency by comparing monthly ad spend with estimated CPC in relation to your competitors, see who has the highest and lowest CPC. To maximise the effectiveness of your budget, it’s essential to focus on driving CPC down while maintaining or improving campaign performance. In this report, The Z Hotels has the lowest estimate monthly ad spend at £154, and Premier Inn has the highest at £3,040,000.

By optimising targeting, refining ad copy, and leveraging data to identify high-converting opportunities, you can ensure every click delivers maximum value. This approach not only stretches your budget further but also boosts your return on ad spend (ROAS), enabling you to achieve stronger results without simply increasing expenditure.

Technical Website Compliance

Savvy digital marketers know that having a technically sound website is an essential component of a successful fully integrated digital strategy - plus a site capable of maximising conversion performance. Brands within the budget hotel space will be juggling making their website easy to navigate for customers looking to book a hotel and not have to endure dead ends as they’re switching amongst pages. 

EasyHotel received the most 404 errors (3,401). From a support perspective, users who cannot find information due to 404 errors may resort to contacting customer service. This not only increases support workload but also signals that the website is failing to meet self-service expectations. 

Site Speed & Conversion Rate Performance

When 62% of consumers are less likely to convert if they have a negative mobile site experience, ensuring that your site is quick and easy to load makes a significant improvement on your overall conversion rates. For customers looking for a budget hotel for a short-term or long-term stay, they’ll want to be able to access the website quickly — including from their mobile, which involves a generous site speed and a user-friendly interface.

The mobile site speed this quarter ranged between 81 and 4, with Travelodge reporting the slowest speed. Slow mobile performance can interrupt key user journeys such as checkout or form completion. Ensuring speed at every step helps users complete goals without errors or drop-offs 

Building Competitive Advantage with Domain Authority

Domain authority is an essential metric for measuring the effectiveness of SEO performance, and helps create a reliable overall gauge of how effective your site is at achieving organic traffic, i.e. ‘free’ traffic that isn’t gained through sponsored ads. Budget hotels should spend time building relationships with high-authority websites in their niche to help expand their online reach and build their backlinks, which can improve their domain authority.

A ‘good’ DA really comes down to how your competitors are performing, however it is generally considered average between 40 and 50, good between 50 and 60, and excellent above 60. Coaching Inn Group reported the lowest DA score (48). Proactively targeting niche topics and expertise areas helps build topical authority. Becoming a trusted source within specific subject areas strengthens relevance signals and improves overall domain authority.

Organic Performance – Mobile & Desktop

A strong organic performance is strategically important as it ensures your site ranks above competitors for key, transactional keywords. When 93% of your customers won’t go past the first page of Google, your absence or lack of targeting for essential keywords will cost you conversions. There are many steps UK budget hotels can take to improve their organic traffic on both desktop and mobile, primarily focusing on ensuring their website is technically compliant on both devices.

Eight brands reported a drop in organic traffic on desktop, with The Inn Collection reporting the biggest loss (-34%). On mobile, five brands reported a drop in organic traffic, with Cairn Hotel Group reporting the biggest drop (-6%). Building high-quality backlinks remains a proactive driver of organic traffic growth. Strong link authority boosts rankings overall, benefiting visibility for users regardless of how they access the web.

Universal Search Opportunity

Google Universal Search Results is an evolving opportunity to make your pages visible on a SERP (Search Engine Results Page). Universal results often appear before traditional listings and are eye-catching for users. Universal search results refer to rankings on a SERP that are not the traditional ‘blue line’ Google link, and a retailer can appear for universal search results without being strong in standard rankings. Budget hotels could look to ‘reviews’ and ‘people also ask’ results, in order to build trust with potential customers and help educate them directly from the SERP.

Premier Inn secured the most Universal Search appearances (196,065). The majority of their appearances came from ‘images’ (170,000).

The Longtail Keyword Opportunity

Longtail keywords are often considered high intent and potentially more likely to convert as a searcher is being more specific. Optimising for longtail keywords also puts your content strategy in a strong position to rank for brand new search terms as they enter Google’s index. Budget hotels should focus on a longtail keyword strategy to help increase their organic traffic across desktop and mobile, as these terms are more specific than short-tail keywords.

Premier Inn secured the most longtail keyword appearances for position 3 (29,366). Premier Inn also secured the most appearances for positions 4–10 (44,363). Longtail keywords improve performance in voice search and conversational queries. As users increasingly search using natural language, longtail phrases better match how people actually speak. This future-proofs content strategies against changing search behaviours.

Facebook Adverts

With the number of Facebook users in the United Kingdom (UK) hitting over 44 million users in 2023, it is not surprising that companies have jumped at the opportunity to advertise on the social media platform. Facebook’s UK digital advertising revenue has been estimated to have breached 2.6b GB pounds in 2019. Budget hotels can use Facebook ads to drive awareness of their latest news and deals and use their social media as an opportunity to build a close relationship with their audience.

We’ve included screenshots of Coaching Inn Group’s sponsored Facebook posts. Authentic tone matters more than polished advertising language. Posts that sound human and relatable outperform overly corporate or scripted messaging.

Top Social Shares & Content

When it comes to social media and on-site content strategies, it is important to release content that has a longer shelf life. An article is considered 'Evergreen' if it has maintained its relevancy to an audience for longer. It's great for your brand engagement, but great for Google, too, who will recognise content which achieves traffic over a long period of time. Generating informational content will help with longtail keyword performance (and ‘people also ask’ results), and budget hotels can look to include shareable content such as infographics to make on-site content engaging on social media.

Premier Inn secured the most Facebook Likes (366,100) and the most Instagram followers (52,700). Facebook was the most popular social media platforms of all brands. Greene King Inns received the highest total engagement rate (15,926) and the highest average engagement (289).

Website Readability & Accessibility

20% of people in the UK have a disability – 2 million of which are people living with sight loss. In addition, 1 in 12 men and 1 in 200 women have some degree of colour vision deficiency. When websites are not designed to meet these needs, brands lose customer interest as they turn elsewhere. Budget hotels should ensure their site is accessible for and ensure sufficient contrast ratios between text and background, using tools to test contrast, and designing with colour-blind users in mind.

The Inn Collection reported the most accessibility alerts (193). Tables without proper headers or structure are another common cause of accessibility alerts. Screen readers rely on table headers to explain the relationship between rows and columns. When tables are used purely for layout or lack clear header associations, users may struggle to interpret the data. These alerts are often found on comparison pages, reports, or pricing table.

GET THE FULL 70-PAGE Q1 2026 REPORT

To get a copy of the full report, please complete the enquiry form. If you want to talk to us about accelerating your digital performance, please call us on 01543 410014 or schedule a call with Rory Tarplee.