Hotel Motel Holiday Inn

Holiday Inn is a multinational brand of hotels, formerly an economy motel chain. Kemmons Wilson, a resident of Memphis, Tennessee, initially came up with the idea which would become Holiday Inn 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.

After franchising the chain, Holiday Inn grew very quickly. 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. Holiday Inn is a fine place to stay. Very clean and well run establishments. On an extended trip, each Holiday Inn is as nice as the last one. Very economical too.