Holiday Inn

Holiday Inn is a famous chain of hotels owned by the InterContinental Hotels Group. This hotel was established by homebuilder Kemmons Wilson in 1952 as an inexpensive family accommodation for travellers within the USA. Wilson came up with the idea of opening a good hotel when he was dissatisfied by the quality and consistency offered by the motels of that time. Wilson incorporated the tenet that the properties should be standardized in an endeavour to offer quality and consistency of service The hotel was first opened in September 1952 at 4941 Summer Avenue in the Berclair district of Memphis. By 1957, Wilson franchised a chain of hotels as Holiday Inn of America in line with his original tenet, ensuring that the chain was clean, predictable, family-friendly and readily accessible to road travellers. Soon there were hundreds of Holiday Inn hotels that spread across the country, dominating the entire motel market.

Holiday Inn has incorporated and introduced many innovative facilities which helped them in gaining immense popularity and acceptance among travellers. In 1988, Holiday took over by UK-based Bass Brewers and the name Holiday Inn International was replaced with InterContinental Hotels Group. However, the ownership of the brand name Holiday Inn is still with the original Holiday Inn group, and is leased as a franchise to InterContinental Group. The Intercontinental Hotels also operate a chain of mid-priced hotels called Holiday Inn Express. These chains of hotels are known as Express by Holiday Inn outside North America.