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Holiday Inn

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This article is about the hotel chain. For other uses, see Holiday Inn (disambiguation).
Holiday Inn Hotels
Company typeSubsidiary of the InterContinental Hotels Group
IndustryHotels
FoundedMemphis, Tennessee
(August 1, 1952 (1952-08-01))
FounderKemmons Wilson
Headquarters
Atlanta, Georgia
,
United States
Number of locations
3,414
Area served
Americas, Europe, Middle East, Africa, Asia-Pacific
ServicesFood services, lodging, conventions, meetings, timeshares
ParentInterContinental Hotels Group
DivisionsHoliday Inn Express
Websiteholidayinn.com
Footnotes / references
[1]

Holiday Inn is a multinational brand of hotels, formerly an economy motel chain, forming part of the British-based InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG). It is one of the world's largest hotel chains with 434,357 bedrooms and 3,414 hotels globally.[2][3] There are over 100 million guest nights each year, globally.

A Holiday Inn in Belfast City Centre, Northern Ireland

History

1950s-1970s

Kemmons Wilson, a resident of Memphis, Tennessee, initially came up with the idea after a family road trip to Washington, D.C., during which he was disappointed by the lack of 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 1942 musical film Holiday Inn, starring Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire. The first Holiday Inn opened at 1941 Summer Avenue in Memphis, the main highway to Nashville, in August 1952 as Holiday Inn Hotel Courts. In the early 1990s it was demolished, but there is a plaque commemorating the site.

Wilson partnered with Wallace E. Johnson (1901-1988)[4] to build additional motels on the roads entering Memphis. Holiday Inn's corporate headquarters was in a converted plumbing shed owned by Johnson. In 1953, the company built its next three hotels which, along with their first hotel built in 1952, covered each approach to Memphis. The second motel was built on Highway 51 South. It was followed by two more in 1953, one on Highway 51 North and another on U.S. 61. 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.

By the beginning of 1956, there were 23 Holiday Inns operating with seven more due to open by year's end. In 1957 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 then became branded as "The Nation's Innkeeper". The chain dominated the motel market, leveraged its innovative Holidex reservation system, put considerable financial pressure on traditional motels and hotels, and set the standard for its competitors, like Ramada Inn, 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 Holiday Inns worldwide, and the motto changed 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
Fachada Hotel Holiday Inn Parque Anhembi

In the 1960s, Holiday Inn began franchising and opening campgrounds under the Holiday Inn Trav-L-Park brand. These recreational campgrounds were listed in the Holiday Inn directories.[5][6]

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 Lake Resort and Country Club near Orlando and a chain called Wilson World Hotels. The acquisition of Trailways in 1968 lasted until 1979, when Holiday Inn 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 Inn hotel. 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.

1980s-present

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 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 his interest, after which the hotel group was known as Holiday Inn Worldwide. The remainder of Holiday Corporation (including the Embassy Suites Hotels, Homewood Suites and Hampton Inn brands) was spun off to shareholders as Promus Companies Incorporated. In 1990, Bass launched Holiday Inn Express, a complementary brand in the limited service segment.[7][8][9]

In 1997 Bass created and launched a new hotel brand, Staybridge Suites by Holiday Inn, entering the North American upscale extended stay market. In March 1998 Bass acquired the InterContinental brand, expanding into the luxury hotel market. In 2000 Bass sold its brewing assets (and the rights to the Bass name) and changed its name to Six Continents PLC. InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) was created in 2003 after Six Continents split into two daughter companies: Mitchells & Butlers PLC to handle restaurant assets, and IHG to focus on soft drinks and hotels, including the Holiday Inn brand.[10]

The brand name Holiday Inn is now owned by IHG, which in turn licenses the name to franchisees and third parties who operate hotels under management agreements.[11]

The Wall Street Journal reported in 2002 that the company, led by Ravi Saligram, was producing a new 130-room "Next Generation" prototype hotel to rebuild the brand. It would include a bistro-like restaurant and an indoor pool. The first of these prototype hotels, the Holiday Inn Gwinnett Center, was built in Duluth, Georgia, in 2003.

On October 24, 2007, IHG announced a worldwide relaunch of the Holiday Inn brand, which spelled trouble for the remaining motels. The relaunch is "focused on delivering consistently best in class service and physical quality levels, including a redesigned welcome experience [and] signature bedding and bathroom products..." The first relaunched Holiday Inn opened in the US in spring 2008. Currently there are more than 2,500 relaunched Holiday Inn brand hotels around the world, and the Holiday Inn global brand relaunch process was completed by the end of 2010.[12] By then, the majority of the HI motels were removed from the chain, with a few exceptions (In the 1980s and 1990s, HI hotels were built alongside the motel properties [i.e. Baton Rouge, Louisiana] in order to provide more amenities and newer rooms). When the relaunch occurred, these motels were either demolished or closed off, even if a full-service hotel was already on site. Today, less than 10 Holiday Inn motels still fly under the flag, others having been replaced by newer Holiday Inn Express locations or have switched to other chains.

In September 2008, IHG announced the creation of a new timeshare brand, Holiday Inn Club Vacations, a strategic alliance with The Family of Orange Lake Resorts.[13] The Holiday Inn at Chessington World of Adventures is safari-themed, with a Zafari Bar and Grill.

Great Sign

The Great Sign as once seen on US highways in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s

The "Great Sign" is the roadside sign used by Holiday Inn during their original era of expansion in the 1950s-1970s. It consisted of a marquee box; a tower with either red, orange, or blue neon lighting, a large chasing arrow that always pointed towards the motel/hotel, and a four-stage flashing animated neon star at the top. It had 1,500 feet (460 m) of neon tubing and over 500 incandescent light bulbs. It was introduced by Kemmons Wilson when he opened his first motel on August 1, 1952. The signs were extremely large and eye-catching, but were expensive to construct and operate. The manufacturer of the sign was Balton & Sons Sign Company (now Balton Sign Company}, whose ancestor D.F. Balton founded Balton & Sons in Memphis in 1875. In shop sketch artists Gene Barber and Rowland Alexander did the orginial design of the sign. Original engineering drawings were also done by Rowland Alexander of Balton & Sons Sign Company. The story goes that the sign’s colors were selected because they were favorites of Wilson’s mother. The popularity of the sign led to many clones being produced, some of which remain to this day. In 1982, following Wilson's departure, the Holiday Inn board of directors made the decision to phase out the "Great Sign" in favor of a cheaper and less catchy backlit sign that still maintained the original backscript logo (this changed after the second remodel). The decision was not without controversy as it essentially signaled the end of the Wilson era and removed a widely recognized company icon. Wilson was angered about this, saying, "It was the worst mistake they ever made". Wilson so loved the sign that it was engraved on his tombstone. The majority of the signs were sold as scrap metal and recycled.

In 2003, in a program of hotel redesign, the company brought back a revamped version of the Great Sign that showed up the company's advertising under the slogan "Relax, it's Holiday Inn." The makeover came with a new prototype hotel that included photography of the sign and a retro-style diner named after founder Kemmons Wilson. The idea was later scrapped.

Several intact fragments of the famous sign have been restored and relit, mostly the Holiday Inn top section of the sign, and the marquee box. However, in 2006 a complete sign was finally found. The disassembled sign, complete with star, marquee box, and the sign base, was discovered in a backlot in Minnesota. On June 3, 2007 it was purchased by a neon sign restoration expert, in order to restore it to its 1950s glory. It is currently being restored and reassembled, and after completion, it will be displayed at the National Save the Neon Signs Museum in Minot, North Dakota. Also, a intact sign (sans the star section, but currently being worked on) that came from a Las Vegas location stands outside of the new American Sign Museum in Cincinnati Ohio. Another intact and operating Holiday Inn Great Sign is at "The Henry Ford" Museum in Dearborn, Michigan and one with a private collector in Kentucky. These signs are all what's left of a classic American Icon.

Business relationship with Gulf Oil

In 1963, Holiday Inn signed a long-term deal with Gulf Oil Corporation in which the lodging chain would accept Gulf credit cards to charge food and lodging at all of its hotels (in the United States and Canada). In return, Gulf would build service stations on the premises of many Holiday Inn properties, particularly those along or near major U.S. and Interstate highways. Many older Holiday Inns locations (including some no longer part of the chain) still have the service station properties intact today, either still in operation or closed down. With the exception of a few locations in the eastern U.S., hardly any of the still-open stations are now Gulf outlets. The portion of the agreement which permitted Gulf credit cards to be used for payment of food and lodging at Holiday Inns was copied by competing lodging chains and major oil companies during the mid-to-late 1960s. Most of those agreements fizzled out with the 1973 oil crisis. The Gulf/Holiday Inn arrangement ended around 1982.

Historical trademark conflicts

  • For two decades, a hotel called Holiday Inn located in Niagara Falls, Ontario prevented the Holiday Inn Corporation from operating one of its own hotels in that city since the name was already in use. The hotel used a logo similar to the old Holiday Inn logo from the 1970s. The Holiday Inn Corporation directory referred to the hotel as "not part of this Holiday Inn system". The hotel also owned the holidayinn.com domain,[14] which forced the much larger corporation to use holiday-inn.com. In 2006, an agreement between IHG and the Niagara Falls, Ontario hotel owners was reached that allowed both the Hotel and Holidayinn.com to be incorporated into the IHG system.[15]
  • During the 1960s and early 1970s, Holiday Inn hotels located in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina were simply called "Holiday" because a local motel already had the "Holiday Inn" name. The name was contested by Holiday Inns, Inc. v Holiday Inn before the United States District Court for the District of South Carolina (Florence division) in 1973. The South Carolina Holiday Inn had franchised their name to Strand Development Corporation, which filed a counterclaim against Holiday Inns, Inc.[16] The dispute resulted in a concurrent use registration for the Myrtle Beach hotel, which still operates as "Holiday Inn", although it is required to use a distinctly different font.

Logos

Brands

Holiday Inn in Cardiff
Express by Holiday Inn, Park Royal, London
  • Holiday Inn – This is the most recognizable tier of service. There are two distinct types: high-rise, full-service plaza hotels and low-rise, full-service hotels. The former also included many high-rises with round, central-core construction, instantly recognizable from the 1970s. Both offer a restaurant, pools at most locations, room service, an exercise room, and functional but comfortable rooms.
    • Holiday Inn Hotel & Suites – The properties offer all the amenities and services of a regular Holiday Inn but consist of rooms mixed with suites.
    • Holiday Inn Resort – The properties also offer all the amenities and services of a full-service Holiday Inn; resorts are considered a more of an advertising branding than a completely different brand. Most Holiday Inn Resorts are located in high-leisure-tourism markets.
  • Holiday Inn Select – These upper-range full-service hotels cater to business travelers. In 2006 it was announced that Holiday Inn Select hotels would be discontinued. Existing hotels may continue to operate under the Holiday Inn Select flag until their existing license expires, however many are converting to Crowne Plaza or regular Holiday Inn hotels, with no further marketing or advertising based around the "Select" moniker. Several Select hotels still remain as of February 2013.
  • Holiday Inn Sunspree Resorts (officially named SunSpree) – The properties are in resort areas with full-service amenities and deluxe service. These are typically very large properties.
  • Holiday Inn Garden Court – The properties exist only in Europe and South Africa and are designed to reflect the national culture.
  • Holiday Inn Express – The properties are smaller versions of Holiday Inn hotels with fewer amenities and services.

Other

Although originally called "Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza", the Crowne Plaza moniker was split from Holiday Inn in 1994 to form a distinctive brand.

During the 1960s and 1970s there were several Holiday Inn Jr. motels with just 44 to 48 guest rooms located in portables. Locations included Camden, Arkansas, Rantoul, Illinois. Cleveland, Mississippi, Sardis, Mississippi, Farmington, Missouri, Springfield, Tennessee and Columbus, Texas. A traditionally constructed lobby building featured a Holiday Grill restaurant. The Camden location had just 32 rooms while the Rantoul location had 64 rooms.

Holiday Inn Magazine was a monthly publication for guests during the 1970s. It featured travel destination and attraction stories in addition to a featured hotel property.

In 1996, Holiday Inn hired advertising firm Fallon McElligott, dropping Young & Rubicam after a six-year relationship.[17]

Holiday Inn Club Vacations

Orange Lake Legends golf course in Orlando

In the early 1980s, Wilson bought a large plot of land bordering Walt Disney World. On this land he built the Orange Lake Resort. Recently, Orange Lake Resorts has acquired other resorts and plans to continue expanding its resort portfolio. Because there are now many resorts in the company, the Holiday Inn Club Vacations was launched in September 2008. There are currently[when?] ten Holiday Inn Club Vacations resort properties:[18]

  • Holiday Inn Club Vacations at Orange Lake Resort, Orlando, Florida
  • Holiday Inn Club Vacations at Ascutney Mountain Resort, Brownsville, Vermont
  • Holiday Inn Club Vacations at Bay Point Resort, Panama City, Florida
  • Holiday Inn Club Vacations at Lake Geneva Resort, Lake Geneva, Wisconsin
  • Holiday Inn Club Vacations at South Beach Resort, Myrtle Beach, South Carolina
  • Holiday Inn Club Vacations at Smoky Mountain Resort, Gatlinburg, Tennessee
  • Holiday Inn Club Vacations at Sunset Cove Resort, Marco Island, Florida
  • Holiday Inn Club Vacations at Desert Club Resort, Las Vegas, Nevada
  • Holiday Inn Club Vacations at Tropical Cove, Panama City Beach, Florida
  • Holiday Inn Club Vacations at Galveston on the Gulf, Galveston, Texas

References

  1. ^ "Supplementary Information" (PDF). International Hotels Group. March 31, 2009. Retrieved June 6, 2009.
  2. ^ "Holiday Inn Express information page".
  3. ^ "Holiday Inn information page".
  4. ^ "Wallace E. Johnson: Co-founder of Holiday Inn chain". Los Angeles Times. 1988-04-29. Retrieved 2012-06-25. Fowler, Glenn (1988-04-29). "Wallace E. Johnson, Co-founder of Holiday Inns chain in 1950's". New York Times. Retrieved 2012-06-25.
  5. ^ "Removed From Timesharing, Jon DeHaan Stays Busy In Other Ways". Ampersandcom.com. Retrieved 2011-12-11.
  6. ^ Article for campground opening in Daytona
  7. ^ "On the Road, Sleeping for Less". The New York Times. December 16, 1990.
  8. ^ "You get what you pay for in economy motels". The News and Courier/Evening Post, Charleston, SC. November 11, 1990.
  9. ^ "Holiday Inn Enters New Market Area". Daily News, Bowling Green, Kentucky. October 8, 1990.
  10. ^ "Our History". InterContinental Hotels Group. January 9, 2008. Retrieved June 6, 2009.
  11. ^ Barbara De Lollis (July 23, 2007). "Holiday Inn chain gives itself a face-lift". USA Today. Retrieved August 3, 2007.
  12. ^ IHG announces worldwide brand relaunch of Holiday Inn
  13. ^ "Holiday Inn Hotels & Resorts". InterContinental Hotels Group. May 12, 2009. Retrieved June 6, 2009.
  14. ^ Holidayinn.com
  15. ^ Holiday Inn Niagara Falls
  16. ^ Holiday Inns, Inc. v. Holiday Inn, 364 F.Supp. 775 (S.C., 1973).
  17. ^ Elliot, Stuart (August 22, 1996) The New York Times.
  18. ^ "About Us". HIClubVacations.com. 2008. Retrieved June 6, 2009.
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