About Holiday Inn By IHG Smithfield
Holiday Inn is a hotel brand created by Kemmons Wilson in 1952 to provide affordable accommodations for families in a clean and friendly environment. Thus, the very first Holiday Inn opened in Memphis, Tennessee. By 1965, Holiday Inn worked with IBM in creating the Holidex system. At present, this technology from the 1960s is still in use, improved and designed for today’s modern needs in hospitality and has enabled all of Holiday Inns’ booking channels handle over 800,000 reservations - daily! With over 300 million reservations annually, Holiday Inn is indeed one of the biggest names in the hospitality industry.
Holiday Inn celebrated many firsts since the brands conception. Holiday Inn had its first hotel opened in Europe, in Leiden in 1967. It became the biggest hotel brand in the world in 1993 with 365,000 rooms available around the world, mostly in the United States. Online booking became available in 1995 and enable guests from different parts of the world to book a room in any of the Holiday Inn hotels online.
The company recently celebrated its 60th year last 2012 and became the hotel provided for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. With more than 2500 hotels around the globe, Holiday Inn is considered as one of the best family brands in the hospitality market.
