With the gut instinct that made him an early success at such varied and odd pursuits as popcorn, pinball, ice cream, Wurlitzer jukeboxes, real estate, Orange Crush, and construction, Wilson saw an opportunity. Why can't a family hit the road and be sure that comfortable accommodation awaited them along the way?
He opened a motel -- an inn, he would later call it -- on a highway leading into his home town of Memphis, Tennessee, and offered amenities that seem common today but were extraordinary at the time: air-conditioned rooms, a swimming pool, free parking, and best of all, free lodging for children staying in their parents' room. A new standard was set, named for the Bing Crosby movie of the day: Holiday Inn.
The burgeoning interstate highway system fed his fast-growing franchise, resulting in Holiday Inn becoming the world's largest provider of lodging -- "the World's Innkeeper," indeed.
Half Luck and Half Brains only begins to capture the frenetic pace that Kemmons Wilson kept throughout his career; he was notorious for 19-hour days and serious frequent flyer mileage in his various Cessnas and Lear jets. "A 40-hour week has no charm for me. I'm looking for a 40-hour day," he says. Whew. Those long days took him far from his poverty-filled childhood, but never far from the notion of family. His five children, who admit they saw little of their father during the height of the Holiday Inn growth in the '60s, remain close today.
This is no slick business narrative; there's precious little discussion of the dramatic changes in the hospitality industry during the '70s and '80s and how they affected Holiday Inn. Instead, the book has the feel of a series of friendly conversations with the folksy Wilson. And there has never been a business memoir with a photo section like this: 122 pages of Wilson at work, at play, with the pope, with Don Ho, with his family in 34 years' worth of Christmas pictures. But it all seems just fine, once you read all of Kemmons Wilson's stories. He seems like such a regular guy that, well, you wouldn't mind staying the night at his place. He'd probably even let you bring along the kids.
Deborah Reynolds has stayed in Holiday Inns in at least six states.
©1996, ProMotion, inc.