Kemmons Wilson

Down-to-earth founder of Holiday Inns

Charles Kemmons Wilson, hotelier: born Osceola, Arkansas 5 January 1913; married 1941 Dorothy Wilson (three sons, two daughters); died Memphis, Tennessee 12 February 2003.

What someone once described as "the vacation that changed the face of the American road" happened in the summer of 1951. In retrospect, and at only slight risk of hyperbole, it might be called the family holiday that revolutionised the global hotel industry.

Kemmons Wilson was by then already a millionaire from Memphis real estate, a chain of popcorn machines and a jukebox franchise, when he took his wife and five young children on a trip to see the sights of Washington, DC. He was horrified at the overpriced, dingy motels which would not even let the children stay for free.

"My $6 room became a $16 one, or my $8 room became an $18 one," he remembered years later:

I told my wife that wasn't fair. I didn't take many vacations, but, as I took this one, I realised how many families there were taking vacations and how they needed a nice place they could stay.

As so often before and since, a bad personal experience was midwife to a brilliant business idea.

Wilson went home, sensing a huge opportunity. A year later he opened his own motel in Memphis, Holiday Inn – a name inspired by the celebrated Bing Crosby/ Fred Astaire film of 1942. In Kemmons Wilson's establishments, children could stay free, every room had air conditioning, and most of them boasted restaurants and swimming pools.

The sign above the first one proclaimed "South's Finest, $4.00 Single, $6.00 Double, Dining Room Now Open". Almost singlehandedly Wilson would transform the hotel industry worldwide, inspiring a host of imitators. Today there are over 1,000 Holiday Inns across the United States, and hundreds more in other countries. At one point, a new one was opening somewhere in the world every two and a half days.

The formula was simple: comfort, cleanliness, decent service and good food at affordable prices. As Time magazine put it in a 1972 cover story, Wilson had changed the motel "from the old wayside fleabag into the most popular home away from home".

Kemmons Wilson's story is the epitome of that most hackneyed concept, the American Dream. He was an only child, born in the most modest circumstances in rural Arkansas. His father died when he was nine months old and the family moved to Memphis, where Doll Wilson, his mother, found work as a dental assistant.

Money was always short: "I was so hungry when I was growing up that I was scared that I might be hungry again," he recounted in his autobiography, Half Luck and Half Brains (1996). "I became a hard worker. I enjoy working. I still put in 12 hours, always have."

Doll Wilson lost her job at the onset of the Great Depression, and her teenage son left high school to find work. With a $50 loan from a friend, he bought a popcorn machine which he installed in the lobby of a cinema. By 1933 the business had brought in $1,700, enough to pay for a house for himself and his mother. He then mortgaged the house to buy the local Wurlitzer jukebox franchise.

The pattern continued throughout his career. He was never afraid to take a risk, or content to sit back on one triumph when new possibilities beckoned. "Put opportunity ahead of security" was one of 20 tips for entrepreneurial success he listed in his book. In his late sixties he did precisely that, staking part of his fortune to build the Orange Lake Country Club near Orlando, Florida, which would become the world's largest timeshare resort.

And, of course, he worked. Another of the 20 tips read, "Only work half a day. It doesn't matter which half you work – the first 12 hours or the second 12 hours." In 1985, the Sunday Times listed Kemmons Wilson as one of "The 1,000 Makers of the 20th Century". In his down-to-earth fashion, he was.

Rupert Cornwell