Holiday Inn
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- This article is about the hotel chain. For the film, please see Holiday Inn (film). For the song by Chingy, please see Holidae In.
Holiday Inn is a brand name applied to hotels within the InterContinental Hotels Group.
Contents |
[edit] History
The original Holiday Inn chain of hotels was founded in 1952 in Memphis, Tennessee, by homebuilder Kemmons Wilson to provide inexpensive family accommodation for travellers within the USA. Wilson opened the first Holiday Inn in September 1952 at 4941 Summer Avenue in the Berclair district of Memphis on the main road to and from Nashville. In 1954, Wilson incorporated the chain with Wallace E. Johnson.
Wilson initially came up with the idea after a family road trip to Washington, DC, during which he was disappointed by the quality and consistency provided by the roadside motels of that era. The name Holiday Inn was given to the original hotel by his architect Eddie Bluestein as a joke, in reference to the Bing Crosby movie.
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 travelers. By 1958 there were 50 Inns across the country, 100 by 1959, 500 by 1964, and the 1000th Holiday Inn opened in San Antonio, Texas, in 1968. 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, Travelodge, Howard Johnson's, Best Western and Days Inn. By June of 1972, when Wilson was featured on the cover of Time Magazine, there were over 1,400 Holiday Inn hotels worldwide. Innovations like the company's Holidome indoor pools turned many hotels into roadside resorts.
The company later branched into other related enterprises, including Medi-Center nursing homes, Continental Trailways, Delta Queen, and various related enterprises. Wilson also later developed the Orange Lake Resort and Country Club near Orlando and a chain called Wilson World Hotels. The family of founder Kemmons Wilson still operates hotels as part of the Kemmons Wilson Companies of Memphis.
Holiday Inn was the first hotel chain to co-produce (or sponsor) a syndicated game show, He Said, She Said, in 1969. Wilson retired from Holiday Inn in 1979.
Although still a healthy company, changing business conditions and demographics saw Holiday Inn lose its market dominance in the 1980s. In 1988 Holiday Inns International was purchased by UK-based Bass Brewers (ultimately to become the InterContinental Hotels Group), followed by the remaining domestic Holiday Inn hotels in 1990, when founder Wilson sold his interest. The brand name Holiday Inn is still owned by the original Holiday Inn group and leased as a franchise to InterContinental.
In January of 2002, the Wall Street Journal reported 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.
For many years, there was a separate, non-affiliated Holiday Inn in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada, using its own version of the Holiday Inn script and the domain name holidayinn.com. [1] However, in 2006, that Holiday Inn has now been folded into the main Holiday Inn chain, and the entire chain uses holidayinn.com. [2]
[edit] Great Sign
The "Great Sign" is the traditional, historic roadside sign used by Holiday Inn during their original era of expansion in the 1950s-1970s. It was the brainchild of Kemmons Wilson who introduced it to the world 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. In 1982, following Kemmons 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 classic script logo. The decision was not without controversy as it essentially signaled the end of the Kemmons Wilson era and removed a ubiquitous and internationally recognizable company icon.
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, a retro-style diner named after founder Kemmons Wilson.
[edit] Brands
A Holiday Inn Select is an upper range full-service hotel which caters to business travelers. Other Holiday-Inn-branded hotels include:
- Holiday Inn Sunspree Resorts
- Holiday Inn Garden Court – which exist only in Europe and South Africa and are designed to reflect the national culture
- Nickelodeon Family Suites (formerly Holiday Inn Family Suites ) — Nickelodeon-themed hotel in Orlando, Florida.
[edit] Holiday Inn Express
Holiday Inn Express (Express by Holiday Inn outside North America) is Intercontinental Hotels chain of mid-priced hotels. Many lack a restaurant and lounge but most have an indoor swimming pool and hot tub.
Hotels offer a complimentary continental breakfast (the cinnamon rolls served are a proprietary recipe), and offer a complimentary pack of toiletries; some being staples such as shampoo, but other items include mouthwash, lotion, and grooming items.
In the mid-2000s, Holiday Inn Express began producing humorous television commercials consisting of someone doing something they were not capable of doing, but then stating that they were actually capable due to the fact that they "stayed at a Holiday Inn (Express) last night".
InterContinental Hotels Group, the parent chain of Holiday Inn Express, has blended this slogan with the Internet, opening a "Smart Store" on their website allowing customers to buy showerheads, towels, toiletries, and cinnamon rolls identical to those featured at the hotels. Holiday Inn Express is one of the few hotel chains to sell their merchandise to the general public.
There are over 1,500 Holiday Inn Express hotels worldwide. Holiday Inn Express is usually considered a separate brand from Holiday Inn.
[edit] Other
Although originally called Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza, Crowne Plaza split to form a distinctive brand from Holiday Inn in 1994.
Recently, Staybridge Suites by Holiday Inn has become simply Staybridge Suites. Hotels remain part of the Holiday Inn system and are included on the Holiday Inn website and printed directory.
During the 1960s there were two Holiday Inn Jr. motels; one in Rantoul, Illinois and the other in Missouri. Motel rooms were located in portables although the Rantoul location also had one small section in a traditionally-constructed building.
[edit] Promotions
Holiday Inn was the first hotel chain to introduce a frequent stayer reward program. It debuted in 1977 as Holiday Inn Inner Circle, but was quickly reorganized into Priority Club Worldwide and later Priority Club Rewards.
On March 17, 2006, Holiday Inn Hotels & Resorts announced its NASCAR Busch Series debut as the primary sponsor of the No. 29 Richard Childress Racing (RCR) Chevrolet and driver Jeff Burton. The schedule will include 10 races this season.
On April 27, 2006, Major League Baseball Properties (MLBP), Major League Baseball Advanced Media (MLBAM), and the InterContinental Hotels Group announced a three year sponsorship deal to make Holiday Inn "The Official Hotel Of Major League Baseball" As part of the deal Holiday Inn will run a certain amount of commercials during Major League Baseball games and other MLB produced programming, be the main sponsor of one of the activities of fanfest during the All Star Week, and offer baseball-related sweepstakes to its Priority Club Members.
[edit] Trivia
- The world's most northern Holiday Inn is located in the city of Oulu, Finland.
- Many of the older Holiday Inn hotels, especially the two-story ones with exterior corridors, have been rebranded as Quality Inns and Ramadas.
- Holiday Inn does not endorse the Chingy song of the same name.
- In 1963, Holiday Inns 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) and in return, Gulf would build service stations on premises of many (if not most) Holiday Inn properties particularly those along or near major U.S. and Interstate highways. Many older Holiday Inns (including locations no longer part of the chain) still have the old station properties intact today, either still in operation or closed down, but 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 soon copied by competing lodging chains and major oil companies during the mid-to-late 1960s but most of those agreements fizzled out with the 1973-74 Arab Oil Embargo with the Gulf/Holiday Inn arrangement ending around 1980.
