Travelodge is first with £5 rooms

Budget hotel chain Travelodge is offering 100,000 rooms for £5 ahead of the launch of Stelios Haji-loannou's no-frills EasyHotel chain in the next couple of months.

The "fiver frenzy" rooms are available in all of Travelodge's 240 hotels but must be booked online by 18 January and stayed in before 31 March.

"This is a first for Travelodge and we believe it's a first for the budget sector - it's certainly not a gimmick," said a company spokeswoman, who claimed the promotion was "completely separate" from the launch of EasyHotel. However, a spokesman for EasyHotel, which plans to offer hotel rooms from £5 per night, said that imitation was the greatest form of flattery.

"Incumbents always try to match us when we enter a new market but we have a huge cost advantage over them, even the budget operators. They cannot sustain a price war with us in the long term," he said, adding that the launch of the first site, in central London, was "imminent".