The Classic Classy Holiday Inn

The Classic Classy Holiday Inn The "Kemmons Wilson Era" was from 1952 up until the early 80s when his magnificent Great Sign was replaced. (Route 66 and the like).

The Holiday Inns of the 1950s through late 1960s are synonymous with family road trips across the highways of America. Kemmons Wilson changed the world of lodging with his innovative Holiday Inn standards. No matter where you went, if you stayed at a Holiday Inn, you could expect the same standards at every Holiday Inn. The page has no affiliation with InterContinental Hotels Group, the present da

y owner of the Holiday Inn brand. Our purpose is to showcase the "classic classy" Holiday Inn of the Kemmons Wilson era of his iconic "great sign." This is not the place to post hotel reviews. If want to offer your praise or criticism of a recent Holiday Inn stay, please visit the IHG website.

11/07/2019

I would like to take this time to welcome ALL new members. This page is run in co-operation with the group The Holiday Inn Great Sign. The mission is the same, and we all post pictures, talk about Holiday Inn before 1982. That page is run by Marcus Nauman and we would love to see all new members here hit that Like button for ‘The Holiday Inn Great Sign’ so if you haven’t already, head on over and join the group.

04/27/2019

I would like to welcome all new members to the page. If you haven’t already done so, head on over to the group “The Holiday Inn Great Sign.” We are all more active over there, and our mission remains the same. To bring back (an energy efficient) Great Sign! Perhaps with LEDs to replace the neon. While I personally love Neon, and the buzzing that comes from them, asking IHG to bring that back would be as pointless as asking GM to bring back the 1957 Chevy Bel-Air! Just won’t happen. Our dream still lives, and if we collect our efforts, and send mass letters to IHG, one day, IHG may just give us what we want.
LED lighting is able to mimic all Neon lighting, so one day, hopefully! But as I said, please head over to the sister group, and help us out. The more voices we can get, the more likely it is that IHG just might listen. Again, the name of the group is The Holiday Inn Great Sign.

———————See y’all there——————

Fergus Falls MN
04/15/2019

Fergus Falls MN

Cleveland TN
04/15/2019

Cleveland TN

04/15/2019

Allendale SC

01/28/2019

I commend Jacob for starting this page as a younger Holiday Inn enthusiast who had a desire to pay tribute to the Kemmons Wilson era. I was not aware of this page when I started The Holiday Inn Great Sign in late 2013 but discovered it later. Jacob and I decided to join forces and promote both pages as siblings so to speak; but over time the group format of HIGS proved to be better suited for discussions and member contributions. While I have tried to update both pages periodically, my recent decline in my use of Facebook has made this more difficult. I am sorry to see CCHI get shut down but understand Jacob's reasons for doing it. Jake, thanks for all of your efforts, and I look forward to your continued support of The Holiday Inn Great Sign.

01/26/2019

Hello Everyone, I regret to inform you that I will be closing down this page. I just do not have the time to keep up on the posts, and engage with fellow members. However, there is a group with several members who engage in this topic daily. It is a very large group. So if you have not already done so, head over to The Holiday Inn Great Sign! I am a member there as well, and I always post when I can. I hope to see everyone there.

09/21/2017

Hi Everyone. I apologize that we haven't been on here as much. We do maintain this page, and post things on here, but if you have not yet gone to THE HOLIDAY INN GREAT SIGN group, please do so! We are all so much more active there, and Marcus Nauman is VERY knowledgeable and can answer your questions more quickly there. Marcus is one of the admins here, but he is THE admin on the group. We see postcards, souvenirs, and the like there. I appreciate all the interest here, and we all still read the stories on here, but if you have a current story that reminds you of THE GREAT SIGN, please visit our group and join! I'll see y'all there!

-----Post Production Update: Unless you have nothing else better to do than to read this, and seeing how much time and ...
08/11/2017

-----Post Production Update: Unless you have nothing else better to do than to read this, and seeing how much time and effort I put into writing this, AND THEN, actually LIKING what I wrote, you may continue scrolling... I don't want to be blamed on "Wasting anybody's precious time." --Jake-----

"Money Money Money Money..MONEY!!! 💵" --The O'Jays - For The Love Of Money, 1973

The picture on the left was shared on one of the groups I participate inn (pardon the pun). In 1982...get ready for a small history lesson... when Charles Kemmons Wilson retired as Chairman of the Board for Holiday Inn of America, the FIRST decision the NEW board made was to replace the work of art on the left, simply known as "The Great Sign 👍🏼" which was beautifully detailed and painted, adorned with Neon tubes, displaying a vast array of colors, and gently humming in the dead of night with an "updated sign that was both cheaper to acquire, and cheaper to maintain." (What, because replacing a flimsy piece of plastic happened to be what was best for business💰) IMHO, this was the very beginning of the end of an AMERICAN success story. Soon, the money hungry sumbitches in the board room 🤑 sold the company to British based, Bass PLC. No longer was Memphis, TN; an AMERICAN city, in an AMERICAN state the home of AN AMERICAN COMPANY. This 🇺🇸 was, in the eyes of the pansies in the board room, no good, and soon, those big, bad corporate executives were waltzing around flying THIS 🇬🇧 instead. The only comfort that remained (at least until 2008-2009) was the fact that "At least they kept the stylish font." Then, in 2008.5, the Hangman pulled the lever and the Holiday Inn that the "Baby Boomer" generation (and history savvy people like myself) grew up loving, with its monstrously large pools (complete with diving boards), its own in-house branded restaurant, simply called RESTAURANT, and comfortable rooms (ok, I will give them that much today, at least the rooms are still comfortable) was DEAD 💀

Welcome to the world of greed and lawsuits. A bunch of Stupid Idiots started having "conveniently timed accidents" and then decided that somebody ELSE must be held accountable for THEIR actions. "I mean, like, how dare they, like, think we can act responsibly without adult supervision.!!?"

Lubbock TX
06/23/2017

Lubbock TX

Amarillo TX
06/23/2017

Amarillo TX

Address

4941 Summer Avenue
Memphis, TN
38122

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