For a hotel company with pan- global aspirations, CitizenM’s beginnings have been surprisingly modest. Since launching its ‘budget boutique’ concept at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport in 2008 to widespread acclaim, the Dutch group has added just two more properties – in Amsterdam’s city centre and in Glasgow.

That is all about to change, however. Next year will see the launch of two hotels in London, at Tate Modern and Tower Hill, while in 2013 the group is due to go transatlantic with a pair of New York properties, in Times Square and the Bowery, no less. After that the roll-out will really be ramped up, with at least five openings a year in city centres and hub airports across Europe, and plans to take the brand as far afield as China, Australasia and Latin America.

Given the timing of the Schiphol opening – three months before the collapse of Lehman Brothers – it would be tempting to attribute CitizenM’s tentative expansion over the past three years to the after-effects of the global recession. But co-founder and chief operating officer Michael Levie insists that a slow initial roll-out was always a core part of the group’s business plan.

“We wanted to first make sure we had everything right,” he says. “We then carefully extended abroad, to Glasgow, and having done all these steps we feel we’re ready for the world stage.”

That CitizenM has got things right, at least as far as its guests are concerned, is amply demonstrated by an ever-growing stack of prestige consumer awards and an unparalleled popularity among denizens of social-media sites. Indeed, the group has earned the ‘world’s trendiest hotel’ title two years running from TripAdvisor reviewers, ahead of luxury brands such as Starwood’s W – an impressive accolade for a brand whose rooms come in at just 14sqm.

Still more impressive is the fact that, thanks to cutting-edge design from Dutch architects Concrete – one of the leading firms behind the new W Leicester Square – and iconic Swiss furniture-maker Vitra, those rooms all feature wall-to-wall windows, superking beds, easy chairs and laptop-sized workdesks. Add to that flatscreen TVs, rainshowers and funky mood lighting – not to mention free Wi-fi and movies – and it’s easy to see why CitizenM has inspired such enthusiasm.

Levie says much of its success is down to the recognition – still relatively rare among hoteliers – that the needs and aspirations of guests, particularly business travellers, have changed dramatically in recent decades. “In the past maybe a traveller that was frequently on the road had luxury pegged as a crystal chandelier and white gloves,” he adds. “Today luxury is opening up your laptop and having instant and free Wi-Fi, or being in your room and having excellent content on TV and free video on demand, or picking up your phone and getting Skype rates.”

The fact that CitizenM is able to offer all this at affordable rates is partly due to the advent of dynamic pricing, the model that revolutionised the low-cost airline sector in the 90s and is filtering through into the budget end of the hotel market. According to Levie, businesses were at first resistant to the concept but have come around to the idea.

“Lots of large corporations in the direct surroundings loved our hotels and came for traditional fixed corporate rates,” he says. “We said, ‘Look, we’re like a budget airline. I’m sure your secretaries or bookers have a credit card to deal with budget airlines and we work the same way.’”

But dynamic pricing is only one aspect of CitizenM’s groundbreaking low-cost model. Inspired by the Japanese pod-hotel concept, rooms are built as standalone units on an assembly line and then assembled on site, keeping construction costs to a minimum. And, thanks to kiosk check-ins and a self-service canteen, CitizenM employs 40% fewer staff than a traditional hotel.

Nevertheless, the brand scores highly on customer-service rankings, an achievement Levie has attributed to a rigorous, original recruitment process – job vacancies are only advertised on social media, applicants are put through an extensive testing procedure involving trust games and team workshops, and 20% of staff salaries are based on customer-satisfaction scores.

This combination of design credentials and hard-nosed business acumen reflects the composition of the management team. Levie himself comes from a strong luxury-hotel background, including a stint as head of operations at

Spanish group NH Hoteles, while chairman Rattan Chadha made his name as founder of the Mexx international fashion chain and CFO Kai Overeem earned his financial credentials at Dutch banks NIBC and ING.

So far, the mix has proved highly successful – so much so that Levie shrugs off suggestions that, given the economic bad news from Europe and the US, this might not be the best time for an extensive roll-out. “We opened up our first property just as the current recession was starting, so we can safely say that we’re doing extremely well and we’ve never seen anything but recession,” he says.

“If you have a product that plays into a current need and recognises exactly what guests want, and they find you and are extremely happy, then that is your best remedy against recession.”

The acid test will come next year – but on current form, it seems likely that London will prove just as enthusiastic about CitizenM as Amsterdam and Glasgow are already.