Ah, life on the road circa 1967. Where would we spend the night? Would dad pull an all-nighter and get us somewhere early in the morning? That was known to happen. Or would we stay at a nice, clean, cheap, joyless motel without a pool?
Or, would dad, feeling flush after a particularly profitable week fixing diesel trucks in his garage, spring for the ultimate experience in lodging? That would, of course, be the Holiday Inn!
Once in a while he did take the splurging plunge, and it was a moment of ecstasy for this kid when he did.
After all, Holiday Inns not only had pools, they were huge, fancy, illuminated, gorgeous pools!
And that wasn't all. Most of them had very nice restaurants, as well. No greasy spoon experiences when we stayed at the motel with the big, friendly green sign outside!
And we kids weren't the only ones who were thrilled. Our moms greatly enjoyed the occasional positive change in the overnight stay experience.
Holiday Inn got its start in Memphis, Tennessee in 1952. That was the year that Kemmons Wilson opened the first one. His idea was that American travelers needed standardized, clean, predictable, family-friendly, and readily accessible places to stay. The architect that he hired to design the building jokingly suggested that he call it Holiday Inn, after a Bing Crosby-Fred Astaire movie that had been released ten years earlier.
Wilson thought that was a splendid idea.
His idea was radical for the times. Wilson had recently traveled to Washington, DC, and was disappointed by the quality of the various motor courts that he stayed at. He envisioned a chain of 400+ Holiday Inns, each one as nice to stay overnight in as any other. So his first motel was built with the idea that it would be far from the last.
Within six years, there were 50 Holiday Inns. Ten years later, in 1968, there were a thousand. In 1972, Wilson appeared on the cover of Time magazine, and the count was up to 1,400.
By then, Holiday Inns had become a part of folklore. On his 1971 album Madman Across the Water, Elton John featured one of my favorite songs, Holiday Inn. It's a good-natured poke at the chain, which was one of his commonest places to crash on long road tours early in his career.
One of the things that Holiday Inns had going for them was a far-ahead-of-its-time reservation system known as Holidex. Many years before the internet, you could reserve your next night's stay at another Holiday Inn several hundred miles away. And you knew that it would be just as nice as the one that you had stayed in the night before. Holiday Inn also boasted that they had no "No Vacancy" signs. If they were booked up, they would help you find another room somewhere else, which was also a pretty radical new idea in customer service.
By the late 70's, some of the original Holiday Inns had begun showing their age. I remember staying in one in Oklahoma City about 1979 (the year that Wilson retired) that was in pretty poor shape, as far as worn-out carpets, stains, and dated decorating were concerned. The chain could have foundered at that point, but it showed that there was still life left in the name.
The corporate entities that took over from Wilson changed the look of the venerable signs that had long stood outside the motels. They also laid down the law as to the condition of any affiliate that would continue to carry the name. Interestingly, there are a few examples of Holiday Inn's original signs that had been repainted by the motel's owners who chose to end the affiliation..
There continue to be about 1,400 Holiday Inns worldwide, and a staggering 1,700 Holiday Inn Expresses. So even though the familiar green signs are gone, the pleasure of staying at a nice, comfortable, clean Holiday Inn is still with us.
Comments (4)
We traveled a lot as children, with our parents. My father was a steam fitter/pipe fiter and we went where the work was.
Probably why I love traveling so much now.
We usually stayed at campy motels or cabins. I can not remember ever staying at one of the larger hotels.Having to travel for work was expensive and we were saving for a house when my parents finally decided to settlr in one area.
But we did eat at Howard Johnsons on occasions, because they had the best ice cream, and the most flavors. It was always a hard decisson as to what flavor we were going to have and it always kept us busy while the food was being prepared. I would change my mind many times before the end of the meal.
To this day I can not pass one with out thinking about their fried clams, ice creams and my family.
Howard Johnsons are still out there, putting people up for the night and feeding them. Most are showing some wear and tear. But still an American Icon of the past, at least for me.
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Posted by Sharon | July 7, 2008 3:42 AM
Posted on July 7, 2008 03:42
I remember Holidays Inns from those days. My parents took me and my 3 young siblings all over the place by car. What a lot of fortitude my mother had. It must have been murder. I am sure we begged to stay at places that had pools.
Posted by Rhea | July 7, 2008 7:18 PM
Posted on July 7, 2008 19:18
Oh the memories… From 1975-78 my rock band (more like a jazzy top 40 cover band) was on the Holiday Inn circuit we played Holiday Inns from all over New England to Charlottesville VA.
It was a dependable steady gig with fairly deluxe accommodations compared to most of the bunking arrangements provided to itinerant groups by less than scrupulous club owners – I won’t depress you with the gory details. The pay was pretty good as well, except that the boredom of a week or 2 in a strange city with days free and working nights was alleviated (or attempted to be) by spending copious quantities of cash. Meals were on us but drinks were half price or occasionally free depending on the generosity of the local management. Band work is one of the few jobs that not only allows drinking on the job, it is actually encouraged, and because we were staying upstairs, there was no driving which can be a bad combination for one’s liver (not to mention judgment.)
One Holiday Inn provided me with a steady Monday night gig for almost 2 years and one summer I played at the Springfield MA H.I. which had a revolving restaurant around the bandstand so we were always getting to play to a new audience every few minutes (and we got breakfast and dinner free!!!)
I only stayed in a Holiday Inn once as paying customer. It was during a long move to a new home. We had the kids staying with their grandparents and after checking in to our room, we called to check on the children and were greeted with a frantic grandmother who was trying to reach us but didn’t know how (pre-cell days.) Our youngest son had a fever of 104 and was inconsolable. So having done nothing more than turn down the bed, we packed up and drove back to grandma’s, the $120 was not refunded.
Posted by Burt | July 9, 2008 12:06 AM
Posted on July 9, 2008 00:06
My family first started taking vacations in 1967. The first several years, we stayed exclusively in Holiday Inns. My dad was an obsessive planner, so would insist on making reservations for the entire trip's accomodations before we left. About 2 weeks before, we would all get in the car and drive over to the local Holiday Inn. This was very exciting. My dad would rattle off to the desk clerk what seemed to us kids as our very far-off exotic destinations (like Grand Island, Nebraska!), and voila... thanks to Rand McNally and the modern miracle that was Holidex, we were ready to roll in our 1965 turquoise Chevy Biscayne station wagon.
For a kid in those days, Holiday Inns were wonderful! Two words: swimming pool. My dad would always book a room facing the pool.
And there was the restaurant. My frugal dad insisted on a hearty breakfast so we wouldn't have to buy lunch (we usually made peanut butter & jelly sandwiches in the room to eat later in the car). We kids would generally opt for Kellogg's, while our parents ordered a hot breakfast. I seem to recall that the breakfast menus were standard, and always had a selection called "The Traveler." It just sounded so... grown up. If there was a lounge, we kids might sneak a peek into it, wondering what such a place might look like. This was strictly grown-up turf, which at that time, was a great mystery to us.
Sometimes we would also have dinner at the restaurant. It was in one of them (Cave City, KY) that my confused 9-year-old ears first heard "in person" a real southern accent when the waitress asked me if I wanted something called butter beans. However, my parents thought that the Holiday Inn dinners were getting too pricey, so instead we would go to a nearby Howard Johnson's, or if we were lucky, a Shakey's. For a kid, this was the best of both worlds!
Our absolutely coolest Holiday Inn experience took place in August 1969 in Cocoa Beach, Florida. This was only 3 weeks after the Apollo 11 moon landing. Our room looked out onto the beach with an unobstructed view of what was then called Cape Kennedy. My dad was in the lobby one evening when he heard talk that an unmanned rocket was to be launched about 3 or 4am. With throngs of other guests, we gathered on the beach at an hour that was unprecedented for a 10-yr-old such as myself. The excitement was palpable! Much to our disappointment, the launch was scrubbed due to some technical issue, but it was still a really cool memory.
In later traveling years (post 1971), we started venturing into more remote locations were there were no Holiday Inns, so cheap, decent mom & pop places (often without a pool) became the order of the day. Don't regret the adventures we had, but there was nothing like those Holiday Inn glory days of the 1960s.
Posted by Kenosha Mom | July 11, 2008 2:41 PM
Posted on July 11, 2008 14:41