In 1951, Dorothy Wilson convinced her husband, Kevin Wilson, to take a vacation. So, they packed up their five kids and drove from Memphis to Washington DC. The roadside lodging they encountered disappointed Wilson; the rooms were cramped, dirty, and uncomfortable. He was also outraged at being charged extra for each child. Wilson’s frustrations fueled a big idea: he could do better. He told his wife that he wanted to build 400 family-friendly motels across the country, each within a day’s drive of the next. She told him he was crazy.
He measured every space they stayed in, and when they returned to Memphis, Wilson had sketches and dimensions for his ideal hotel space. His measurements and his formula remain the common standard for hotel rooms today. Wilson compiled a list of what he deemed to be the essentials to his hotel: a standardized room size of 12 by 26 feet with a bathroom and in-room telephones and TV, a swimming pool, a restaurant, ice machines, and, most importantly, no charge for children under the age of 12.
The Holiday Inn
Once back home in Memphis, Wilson shared his notes, sketches, and vision with architect Eddie Bluestein. Bluestein got to work drafting up plans to bring Wilson’s vision to reality. One day while Bluestein was working, he watched a Bing Crosby film and scribbled the name of the film at the top of his blueprints. The movie was called “Holiday Inn”. Wilson loved it, and the rest, as they say, is history.
First Holiday Inn
Wilson’s first Holiday Inn opened in Memphis in 1952. The location was so successful that Wilson built three identical Holiday Inns on the three other roads leading into Memphis. Wilson was a workhorse; he loved to travel, to chase daylight, as he called it, a never-ending hunt for the perfect location for a hotel.
Growth In America
Wilson’s innovative hotel idea was perfect timing to parallel the growth in America. The post-war baby boom meant there were more families, and improved working conditions meant more workers had paid vacation time to burn. City hotels were too expensive for the average family, and rural motels offered inconsistent quality.
Holiday Inn popped up just when interstate highways made travel and vacations easier. Holiday Inn offered travelers both consistency and quality, clean rooms with amenities, all at an affordable price. Wilson franchised the chain, with the first of those opening in Mississippi in 1954. By 1957, there were 30 Holiday Inns; there was steady, strong growth in the years that followed, 50 locations by 1958, which doubled by the next year. There were 500 by 1964, and 1000 by 1968.
Holodecks
The chain launched Holodecks in 1965, a revolutionary reservation system using teleprinters. When AT&T introduced their 1-800 number service, Holiday Inn added a toll-free call center for reservations, marketing themselves as “your host from coast to coast”. Time magazine featured Wilson on their cover in June of 1972, labeling him “the nation’s innkeeper”. The franchise morphed that into their new motto, “the world’s innkeeper”. At this time, there were 1,400 Holiday Inns worldwide.
There was even more expansion in the 1960s; Holiday Inn franchised and opened campgrounds called “Holiday Inn Travel Park”. They also signed a deal with Gulf Oil Corporation, allowing Gulf to build service stations on many of their hotel properties. In exchange, Holiday Inn accepted Gulf credit cards for food and lodging. The growth of Holiday Inn in the ’60s was remarkable; by 1962, Holiday Inns opened at a rate of two per week. In its prime, a new Holiday Inn opened every two and a half days somewhere in the world.
Great Sign
The company built the Holiday Inn University and Conference Center, a teaching hotel for employee training, in 1971 in Mississippi. They added an on-site airport two years later. Perhaps the most successful marketing that Holiday Inn had was their “great sign”.
Wilson wanted a sign at least 50 feet high and visible in both directions. He also thought a changeable marquee was important to welcome various groups and guests. They were expensive to build and maintain, but they were eye-catching and became a welcomed sight for the weary traveler. The Holiday Inn brand grew and changed over the years, including phasing out the great sign for a cheaper backlit sign after Wilson retired.
Wilson considered the change in signage the worst mistake they ever made and actually had the sign engraved on his tombstone when he died in 2003. Today, Holiday Inn Hotels and Resorts is the most widely recognized lodging brand in the world. Kevin Wilson was a dreamer and a doer; he used his personal frustrations as fuel to create and develop what could be. The result was the birth of the modern hotel as we know it.
