BUSINESS at a West Dorset holiday park is booming thanks to award-winning TV drama Broadchurch.

The programme, filmed around West Bay, returned for a second series on ITV this month starring David Tennant and a host of other stars – and is proving another hit with audiences.

Visitors flocked to the area last year keen to see the locations and 2015 looks set to be another bumper year for Broadchurch tourism.

Eype’s Highlands End Holiday park general manager James Cox said: “At the end of October the cast and crew of Broadchurch were filming the second series at the yellow hut on Eype Beach.

“While the holidaymakers at Highlands End Holiday Park were asked not to take pictures of any plot spoilers they had a bird’s-eye view of the filming from the decking of their caravan holiday homes.”

He added: “We have recently expanded our luxury holiday lodge accommodation as the existing lodges, bungalows, holiday homes and apartments are all booking well on the back of “Broadchurch Fever”.

Year-to-date bookings have inc-reased 57.8 per cent for lodges and apartments and 196 per cent for tenting, touring caravan and motorhome pitches.”

Jasper Phillips from West Dorset Leisure Holidays, which owns Highlands End, said after the first series of Broadchurch its pre-owned static holiday caravan stock sold out overnight and more were on order for February for its Burton Bradstock site.

It comes after it was revealed Hotels. com said searches for accommodation in Bridport went up by 67 per cent after the series one finale and had risen by 161 per cent in the few days since the latest episode aired.

Hotel booking sites have reported a 200 per cent rise in searches in Dorset and Somerset.

The Echo also reported this week how the ‘Broadchurch effect’ was thought to have pushed up the price of a wooden chalet which has a starring role in the programme.

The 100-year-old, two-bedroom chalet on the banks of the River Brit in West Bay, which doubles as DI Alec Hardy’s house on the water, is now up for sale for £275,000.