The motel is an indelible symbol of the American road trip. One of the most successful chains, Holiday Inn, was the creation of an Arkansan, Kemmons Wilson. Starting with very little to his name, Wilson and his partners built a hotel chain that eventually topped 1,800 locations.
Charles Kemmons Wilson was born in January 1913 in Osceola, a small community on the Mississippi River at the northeastern tip of Arkansas. His father was an insurance salesman who provided a healthy living for his wife and only child. However, tragedy struck in October 1913 when he suddenly died. Left with no means to sustain herself or their baby, his wife then took the future entrepreneur to Memphis to begin a new life.
His mother began working as an accountant, and when he became older, Wilson began selling magazines door-to-door. When he was 14, he was working as a deliverer for a local drugstore when he was seriously injured in an accident. He spent nearly a year in a body cast and missed the entire school year. When his mother was hospitalized two months before his high school graduation, he dropped out and went to work full time. By the end of the 1930s, he owned seven movie theaters. By the 1940s, he had expanded into real estate.
The idea behind the motel chain came to Wilson after a disappointing road trip with his family to Washington, DC. He found many motels to be in poor shape or uncomfortable. Wilson was convinced that he could do better and decided to start his own motel. He brought on fellow Memphis businessman Wallace Johnson as a partner. Johnson, a Mississippi native, was one of the most successful builders in Memphis by the early 1950s, starting from a $250 loan for his first project in 1939.
Plans began to materialize, and the two decided that the best locations would be four along the main highways coming into Memphis. With a plan in place, architect Eddie Bluestein was hired to design the new motel. According to the story, Bluestein jokingly called the new hotel “Holiday Inn” after the popular 1942 Irving Berlin musical that starred Fred Astaire, Bing Crosby, and Virginia Dale about a retired Broadway performer who turns his Connecticut farm into a hotel and entertainment venue open only on holidays.
The first Holiday Inn opened in 1952 on US 70, the main highway into Nashville at the time. Three more were added in 1953. By 1957, the chain was up to 30 locations. In 1964, Holiday Inn opened its five hundredth motel; and Wilson and Johnson were looking to expand even further. In 1967, the company began a nationwide toll-free phone reservation system. Wilson bought the Continental Trailways bus company in 1968 in order to bring tourist groups to the motels. The company even offered a mock “teaching hotel” in 1971 to show managers and franchises how the motel should be run.
By 1974, Wilson also bought a basketball team, the Memphis Sounds, part of the American Basketball Association. Though the team was popular, financial problems forced the team to shut down in 1975.
In the meantime, Holiday Inn continued to thrive. Several competing hotel chains were bought out by the company. The number of motels nationwide, and now in other nations, surged past one thousand. The company grew even faster as the company began offering franchise opportunities to interested investors.
However, not every enterprise was as successful. Wilson and Johnson co-founded Medicenters of America in 1966, an attempt to build a chain of nursing homes. The effort fizzled after a few years. Johnson, looking to his success as a builder, partnered with Wilson again with Alodex Corporation, which sought to build houses. Alodex was dissolved in 1976. Though disappointing, the losses did not dampen their friendship.
Johnson retired from Holiday Inn in 1977. Wilson was quick to share the credit of his success with Johnson, calling him “the greatest partner a man could ever have.” By the time Johnson died in 1988, the chain had grown to more than 1,800 units across the globe.
A British company, Bass PLC, bought the company in 1988. Wilson sold his share in 1990. He wrote his autobiography in 1996, titled Half Luck and Half Brains. By this time, the original Holiday Inn in Memphis had been torn down, but the chain continued to be a popular stop for travelers. Wilson died in Memphis in 2003 at age 90.