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Kemmons Wilson, a resident of Memphis, Tennessee, was inspired to build a motel after being disappointed by the poor quality of roadside accommodations during a family road trip to Washington, D.C.[4] During the construction, the name "Holiday Inn" was coined by Wilson's architect Eddie Bluestein as a joking reference to the 1942 musical film Holiday Inn. Their first hotel/motel opened in August 1952 as "Holiday Inn Hotel Courts" at 4941 Summer Avenue in Memphis, then the main highway (U.S. Hwy. 64/70/79) to Nashville. It was demolished in 1994.

Wilson partnered with Wallace E. Johnson to build additional motels on the roads entering Memphis.[5] In 1953, three more Holiday Inns were built on U.S. 51 South, Highway 51 North, and U.S. 61.

By 1957 there were 30 Holiday Inns, and Wilson began marketing the chain as "Holiday Inn of America". There were 50 locations across the US by 1958, 100 by 1959, 500 by 1964, and 1000 in 1968.[6] A number of early locations were franchised, some by the Albert Pick corporation of Chicago. Because a number of Albert Pick franchisees were recommending customers to other Albert Pick hotels instead of to Holiday Inn, the Holiday Inn corporation enacted a rule that franchisees could not own locations of another hotel as well as a Holiday Inn. This led to the Albert Pick-franchised locations exiting the brand by the end of the 1950s. The rule on franchising remained until 1973, when a franchisee was denied the rights to build a location in Newark, New Jersey because of this rule; the United States District Court thus declared the rule a violation of a United States anti-monopoly law.[7]

In 1965, the chain launched Holidex, a centralized reservation system where a visitor to any Holiday Inn could obtain reservations, by teleprinter, for any other Holiday Inn location. Promoting itself as "your host from coast to coast", Holiday Inn added a call center after AT&T's introduction of 800 toll-free telephone number service in 1967.[8] Holiday Inn opened their first campground, Trav-L-Park, in Angola, Indiana, in 1970.[9][10]


The Holiday Inn in Beirut was damaged in the Lebanon civil war.
Branded as "The Nation's Innkeeper", the chain put considerable financial pressure on traditional motels and hotels, setting the standard for competitors like Ramada Inn, Quality Inn, Howard Johnson's, and Best Western. By June 1972, with over 1,400 Holiday Inns worldwide, Wilson was featured on the cover of Time magazine and the franchise's motto became "The World's Innkeeper".