Holiday Inn

Kemmons Wilson initially came up with the idea after a family road trip to Washington, D.C., during which he was disappointed by the quality and consistency provided by the roadside motels of the time. The name Holiday Inn was given to the original hotel by his architect Eddie Bluestein as a joke, in reference to the musical film Holiday Inn (1942), starring Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire. Thefirst Holiday Inn opened at 4941 Summer Avenue in Memphis, the main highway to Nashville, in August 1952 as Holiday Inn Hotel Courts. The motel was demolished in the early 1990s, but there is a plaque commemorating the site.

Wilson partnered with Wallace E. Johnson (1901-1988)[2] to build additional motels on the roads entering Memphis. Holiday Inn's corporate headquarters was in a convertedplumbing shed owned by Johnson in 1953, when the company built its first four hotels, one covering each approach to Memphis. On the occasion of Johnson's death, Wilson was quoted as saying, "The greatest man I ever knew died today. He was the greatest partner a man could ever have." Together they started what Wilson would shepherd into Holiday Corp., one of the world's largest hotel groups.

In1957, Wilson franchised the chain as Holiday Inn of America and it grew dramatically, following Wilson's original tenet that the properties should be standardized, clean, predictable, family-friendly and readily accessible to road travellers. By 1958, there were 50 locations across the country, 100 by 1959, 500 by 1964, and the 1,000th Holiday Inn opened in San Antonio, Texas, in 1968. The chain thenbecame known as "The Nation's Innkeeper". The chain dominated the motel market, leveraged its innovative Holidex reservation system, put considerable financial pressure on traditional hotels and set the standard for its competitors, like Ramada Inns, Quality Inn, Howard Johnson's, and Best Western. By June 1972, when Wilson was featured on the cover of Time magazine, there were over 1,400 HolidayInn hotels worldwide. The motto then changing to "The World's Innkeeper". Innovations like the company's Holidome indoor pools turned many hotels into roadside resorts.





Holiday Inn, Nicosia, Cyprus




Holiday Inn, Southampton, England




Holiday Inn in Everett, Washington




Holiday Inn in São Paulo
In the 1960s, Holiday Inn began franchising and openingcampgrounds under the Holiday Inn Travel-L-Park brand. These recreational campgrounds were listed in the Holiday Inn directories.[3][4]

The company later branched into other enterprises, including Medi-Center nursing homes, Continental Trailways, Delta Queen, and Show-Biz, Inc., a television production company that specialized in syndicated country music shows. Wilson also developed the Orange LakeResort and Country Club near Orlando and a chain called Wilson World Hotels. The acquisition of Trailways in 1968 lasted until 1979 when Holiday sold Trailways to private investor Henry Lea Hillman Sr., of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; in the years during which Trailways was a subsidiary of Holiday Inn, television commercials for Holiday Inn frequently showed a Trailways bus stopping at a Holiday Innhotel. Wilson retired from Holiday Inn in 1979. As of 2012 the family of founder Kemmons Wilson still operates hotels as part of the Kemmons Wilson Companies of Memphis.





New style Holiday Inn near the Chicago Midway International Airport
Although still a healthy company, changing business conditions and demographics saw Holiday Inn lose its market dominance in the 1980s. Holiday Inns,Inc. was renamed "Holiday Corporation" in 1985 to reflect the growth of the company’s brands, including Harrah's Entertainment, Embassy Suites Hotels, Crowne Plaza, Homewood Suites by Hilton and Hampton Inn. In 1988, Holiday Corporation was purchased by UK-based Bass PLC (the owners of the Bass beer brand), followed by the remaining domestic Holiday Inn hotels in 1990, when founder Wilson sold...