Mr. Kemmons-Wilson founded the first Holiday Inn in 1952, and in less than 20 years he had opened 1,000 Holiday Inn hotels in every highway-accessible part of the United States and around the world, making the Holiday Inn Group the world's first billion-dollar hotel group. Although the Holiday Inn Group has now been acquired by the British BASS Group and has become a significant part of the world's second largest hotel group, it is still exciting to look back on the journey of Holiday Inn's creation and expansion. It was born out of necessity.
Mr. Kemmons Wilson had five children in his life***, and like most Americans, when he had a spare moment, he would get in his car and take the family on a trip. But during the trip, Mr. Wilson has too many bad things, the most intolerable is: labor all day, the whole family but it is difficult to find a comfortable hotel to rest. Either it was too dirty, too expensive, or there was no restaurant, or the children had to be charged more for the room. In the United States, many motels discouraged families and charged extra for beds for couples with children. Despite the motels' dirtiness and simplicity, the charges were so high that Wilson couldn't stand them any longer, and being a businessman, he resolved, "I'll make a show of it."
Mr. Wilson designed the positioning of the Holiday Inn from his own personal experience: to create a place for people to meet, to relax, to aspire to and to realize their dreams. First of all, to make guests feel at home, there is a parking lot outside the hotel, inside there is a restaurant, swimming pool, the room has a refrigerator, air conditioning and telephone, and most importantly: children can stay free of charge, and the beds in the rooms are particularly wide (and still are), sleeping one or two more small children is no problem at all.
The world's first Holiday Inn was born in Mr. Kemmons Wilson's hometown, Memphis, Tennessee, USA, in 1952. Holiday Inn was positioned as a mid-priced hotel with a high standard of service, and quickly attracted guests from the mid-priced market, which made up 65% of the total local market. At the time, there were virtually no mid-priced hotels on the market, and the success of the Holiday Inn was a natural progression.
Rapid cloning
Once the Holiday Inn was a success, Mr. Wilson wanted to capture more of the market as quickly as possible. But after self-financing the first few Holiday Inns, Mr. Wilson soon realized that it would be difficult for a single person to expand the hotels on a large scale to meet growing customer demand. So he began allowing investors to buy the rights to the Holiday Inn brand and build and operate the hotels themselves. This decision made Mr. Wilson a pioneer in the world's hotel industry to introduce franchising mechanism for expansion, the hotel industry commented, "Mr. Kemmons Wilson changed the history of the world's hotel industry."
In addition to the introduction of franchising, Mr. Wilson also caught another great opportunity --- the U.S. interstate highway system was stretching across the country. With its positioning as a mid-priced hotel, its attentive, warm and comfortable service and its unique franchising approach, the Holiday Inn quickly became the most attractive hotel in post-World War II America. By the late 1950s, there were 100 Holiday Inn hotels in the United States; by 1964, the number reached 500; and by 1968, Holiday Inn hotels topped 1,000. When the construction of interstate highways in the United States was nearing completion, the Holiday Inn Group had begun to develop near airports, downtown centers, and suburban office districts, and Holiday Inn hotels had spread throughout the U.S. In 1968, the first Holiday Inn hotel in Europe opened, and the first Holiday Inn hotel in Asia opened its doors to guests in 1973. By this time, Holiday Inn was in overdrive, with a Holiday Inn opening somewhere in the world every two and a half days, and Holiday Inn Group became the first restaurant and hotel group in history to operate at a billion dollars.
Continuous Innovation
With the task of teaching the staff of the 26 Holiday Inn hotels in China about the history of Holiday Inn and the standardized management model of Holiday Inn, Mr. H.F. Tan, manager of Holiday Inn University China, knows the best of Holiday Inn's history by heart. He said, "The development process of Holiday Inn is actually the process of innovation. Thanks to innovation, Holiday Inn is always running at the forefront."
Innovation began with the first Holiday Inn: with telephones, televisions and air conditioning in every room, free parking, children under 12 staying with their parents free of charge, and on-site restaurants, swimming pools and meeting facilities, Holiday Inn quickly gained a foothold in the United States at the time. The most historic innovation was in the late 50's, after Mr. Wilson opened several more Holiday Inn hotels, he found that his own strength alone was not enough to rapidly expand the scale of the hotel industry, thus introducing the franchising method into the hotel industry, and this innovation provided a brand new idea and the best model for the development of the world's hospitality industry, and the world-class hotel groups were able to grow rapidly. At the same time, in order to support the operation of franchised hotels, Mr. Wilson opened the Holiday Inn University, to join the Holiday Inn operators and staff to provide comprehensive training, this approach allows franchised hotels and Holiday Inn to maintain unity in all aspects.
In the years since, Holiday Inn has continued to innovate.
In the 1960s, Mr. Wilson, who had been in the building materials and decorative supplies business, turned his Holiday Inn into his biggest customer, and set up a "hotel service center" to encourage franchised hotels to buy building materials and decorative supplies from the hotel service center in order to ensure that the hotel's décor was uniform, and the last guests commented: "When you wake up from a dream, it's hard to tell whether you're in Nevada or California. When you wake up from a dream, it's hard to tell if you're in Nevada or California because Holiday Inn hotels are the same all over the country. However, one uniformity that brought great convenience to guests was the first Holiday Inn to use a computerized networked reservation system, Holidex, which allowed guests to make reservations at any Holiday Inn through their computers, a system that was soon launched at other hotels and continues to be used today. Every day, more than 437,000 Holiday Inn rooms are booked through the Holedex system, and Holiday Inn is known in the industry as the leader in computerized reservation systems.
Holiday Inn's innovation in the 1970s was the invention of the collect 800 number. In order to make it easier for guests to check Holiday Inn rates and other information, Holiday Inn bought a special 1-800-HolidayInn number at the telephone exchange, and all calls to this number were paid for by Holiday Inn, an initiative that pushed Holiday Inn's level of service to yet another peak. Today, the 800 toll-free number is widely used around the world, and has even become a standard for providing attentive service to customers.
The pioneering use of a centralized commission payment system, the LANmark integrated hotel computer management system, and the provision of international Internet reservations were among Holiday Inn's innovations in the 1980s and 1990s that utilized high technology; and the creation of the Holidome indoor recreation center with a glass ceiling, the E-ZONE video game lounge, and the establishment of children's suites were among Holiday Inn's innovations in service and amenities. The creation of the Holiday Inn Indoor Entertainment Center with a glass ceiling, the E-ZONE gaming room, and the creation of children's suites were innovations in service improvements. These innovations have given Holiday Inn a timeless status and reputation.
BASS Acquisition
In the mid and late 1970s, the hotel business market for business and tourist travelers became highly competitive, with other hotel groups, including hotels that were not part of the mid-market, drastically reducing their prices and increasing their amenities in an effort to attract customers. At that time, Holiday Inn Group found that some of its hotels were beginning to age, the market was being carved up, its business objectives were out of step, and the Holiday brand was going downhill.
In the early 1970s, BASS Hotels had been looking for business development opportunities outside of the beer brewing industry, and the company was already well-positioned to develop a global hotel business based on the Crest Hotel Group. However, to be truly global, it had to expand beyond the company's home base. BASS considered a number of hotel groups, including Ramada, Radisson and DunfeyOmni, before choosing Holiday Inn, but Holiday Inn demonstrated a number of selling points to BASS, including the well-known Holiday Inn brand. The acquisition was completed in 1990.
BASS developed a strategic new approach for the Holiday Inn Group to develop the company's global brand, and Holiday Inn has since strengthened and restructured its marketing efforts, while expanding its range of hotels and services.
In the summer of 1991, BASS moved Holiday Inn's headquarters from Memphis to Atlanta. While Memphis had been Holiday's headquarters for about 40 years, Atlanta had a good infrastructure and transportation network connecting it to the rest of the world, and BASS felt that Atlanta's international status would help Holiday Inn to become an international group.
The Second Coming
About 90 percent of the more than 1,500 Holiday's brands are invested in and managed by BASS Hotel Group, with the other hotels independently operated and managed by franchise owners. Today, BASS Hotels owns a variety of brands of hotels, the traditional Holiday Inn has been known to the majority of travelers; "Crowne Plaza" and "CrownePlazaHotels & Resorts" (CrownePlazaHotels & Resorts) are located in the world's major cities, to provide travelers with more comfortable services and amenities; "HolidayInnExpress" (HolidayInnExpress), "Holiday Inn Express" (HolidayInnExpress). HolidayInnExpress does not have restaurants, bars or large meeting facilities, but offers holiday standard comfort and value; HolidayInnGardenCourt offers holiday standards with local flavor and flair. In September 1994, the then Holiday Inn Group announced a new branding strategy with the introduction of two new Holiday brands: Holiday Inn Select, designed for business travelers who appreciate the traditional value and ambience of a Holiday Inn. One, HolidayInnSelect, is designed for business guests who appreciate traditional values and surroundings, while the other, HolidayInnHotel & Suites, is designed for long-stay travelers and those seeking generous work and leisure space. At the same time, the group is also taking aggressive action to modernize a large number of traditional Holiday Inn hotels in the United States.
Over the years, the appearance, variety and location of the hotels bearing the Holiday Inn name have changed significantly, but the basic principles of service, quality and value, founded by Mr. Clemons Wilson in 1952, have remained the same. Instead of training, training is done in a top-down manner through information dissemination. This is because at this stage, we are more focused on the effectiveness of the training, both in terms of achieving the objectives of the training and in terms of cost savings."
~~~It took me a long time to find it ah~Quickly give me points~