(CNN) — Kemmons Wilson was ferrying his family from New York to Washington by car when the idea first came to him.
The Wilsons needed to stop for the night, but it was the summer of 1951, and American roadside facilities weren’t what they are today. Motels were luck of the draw, and often expensive given the lack of amenities.
“Rooms were never quite as advertised, so [my father] would get a key and go take a look at the room before we signed up for it,” recalls Kemmons’ oldest child, Spence Wilson, today.
“Many of the things that we think of today as just standards, well, they weren’t standards back then.”
On this particular East Coast road trip, Kemmons, a father of five and an entrepreneur, started dreaming about a simple, family-friendly motel that would offer every necessary amenity. There wouldn’t just be one. There would be hundreds, dotted up and down US roads.
No matter the state, whatever the highway, you could pull up at this hotel and know exactly what you were getting.
In August 1952, Kemmons Wilson followed through on this dream, opening the first ever Holiday Inn. Seventy years later, the Holiday Inn brand is still going strong.
Today, low-cost roadside hotels are commonplace, but back in the 1950s, Kemmons’ concept was “truly revolutionary,” as Ross Walton, a historian for the University of Southern Mississippi Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage, puts it.
“Wilson put together this package of ideas of what kind of amenities that the business traveler and vacationing families would want,” Walton tells CNN Travel. “Things that were upcharges anywhere else, he made them all standard, at a very reasonable room rate.”
Revolutionizing the motel
The image on the left shows Kemmons Wilson’s children cutting the ribbon at the first Holiday Inn opening in 1952. The image on the right is from 2012 and depicts the Wilsons, including Spence Wilson, far left, recreating the image.
Royce DeGrie/Getty Images
Kemmons opened the first ever Holiday Inn in his home city of Memphis, Tennessee. His children were involved in the opening ceremony.
“The mayor, who was supposed to come and cut the ribbon, didn’t show. Dad was not happy about…
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