| • Science | • People | • Locations | • Timeline |
Holiday Inn is a brand name applied to hotels within the InterContinental Hotels Group.
The original Holiday Inn chain of hotels was founded in 1952 in Memphis, Tennessee by Kemmons Wilson to provide cheap family accommodation for travellers within the USA.
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 architect Eddie Bluestein as a joke, in reference to the Bing Crosby movie.
The chain continued to grow, more or less following Wilson's original tenets of standardization and being family-friendly. By 1972, when Wilson was featured on the cover of Time Magazine, there were over 1,400 Holiday Inn hotels worldwide.
In 1988 Holiday Inns International was purchased by Bass Brewers (ultimately to become the InterContinental Hotels Group), followed by the remaining Holiday Inn hotels in 1990. The brand name Holiday Inn is still owned by the original Holiday Inn group and leased as a franchise to InterContinental.
The company offers several different types of hotels under the Holiday Inn banner. A hotel named Holiday Inn is a mid to upper range hotel. Holiday Inn Express is a type of mid-range Holiday Inn that usually charges less than a regular Holiday Inn.