|
|
The logos can be opened with Adobe Illustrator, Macromedia Freehand, CorelDraw or Adobe Photoshop. All the logos are also available in format EPS.
if you don't have them .. you can get them
here!
.............................. Holiday Inn Express
Logo and Trademark..............................
Holiday Inn is a brand name applied to hotels within the InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG). The original Holiday Inn chain of hotels was founded in 1952 in Memphis, Tennessee, by homebuilder Kemmons Wilson to provide inexpensive family accommodation for travelers within the USA. Wilson opened the first Holiday Inn in September 1952 at 4941 Summer Avenue in the Berclair district of Memphis on the main road to and from Nashville. In 1954, Wilson incorporated the chain with Wallace E. Johnson.
Wilson initially came up with the idea after a family road trip to Washington, DC, during which he was disappointed by the quality and consistency provided by the roadside motels of that era. The name Holiday Inn was given to the original hotel by his architect Eddie Bluestein as a joke, in reference to the Bing Crosby movie.
In 1957, Wilson franchised the chain as Holiday Inn of America, and it grew dramatically, following Wilson's original tenet that the properties should be standardized, clean, predictable, family-friendly, and readily accessible to road travelers. By 1958 there were 50 Inns across the country, 100 by 1959, 500 by 1964, and the 1000th Holiday Inn opened in San Antonio, Texas, in 1968. The chain dominated the motel market, leveraged its innovative Holidex reservation system, put considerable financial pressure on traditional hotels, and set the standard for its competitors like Ramada Inns, Travelodge, Howard Johnson's, Best Western and Days Inn. By June 1972, when Wilson was featured on the cover of Time magazine, there were over 1,400 Holiday Inn hotels worldwide. Innovations like the company's Holidome indoor pools turned many hotels into roadside resorts.
The company later branched into other related enterprises, including Medi-Center nursing homes, Continental Trailways, Delta Queen, and various related enterprises. Wilson also later developed the Orange Lake Resort and Country Club near Orlando and a chain called Wilson World Hotels. The family of founder Kemmons Wilson still operates hotels as part of the Kemmons Wilson Companies of Memphis.
Wilson retired from Holiday Inn in 1979. The "Great Sign" is the traditional, historic roadside sign used by Holiday Inn during their original era of expansion in the 1950s-1970s. It was the brainchild of Kemmons Wilson who introduced it to the world when he opened his first motel on August 1, 1952. The signs were extremely large and eye-catching, but were expensive to construct and operate. In 1982, following Kemmons Wilson's departure, the Holiday Inn board of directors made the decision to phase out the "Great Sign" in favor of a cheaper and less catchy backlit sign that still maintained the classic script logo. The decision was not without controversy as it essentially signaled the end of the Kemmons Wilson era and removed a ubiquitous and internationally recognizable company icon.
In 2003, in a program of hotel redesign, the company brought back a revamped version of the Great Sign that showed up the company's advertising under the slogan "Relax, it's Holiday Inn." The makeover came with a new prototype hotel that included photography of the sign and a retro-style diner named after founder Kemmons Wilson.
In 1963, Holiday Inns signed a long-term deal with Gulf Oil Corporation in which the lodging chain would accept Gulf credit cards to charge food and lodging at all of its hotels (in the United States and Canada) and in return, Gulf would build service stations on premises of many (if not most) Holiday Inn properties particularly those along or near major U.S. and Interstate highways. Many older Holiday Inns (including locations no longer part of the chain) still have the old station properties intact today, either still in operation or closed down, but with the exception of a few locations in the eastern U.S., hardly any of the still-open stations are now Gulf outlets. The portion of the agreement which permitted Gulf credit cards to be used for payment of food and lodging at Holiday Inns was soon copied by competing lodging chains and major oil companies during the mid-to-late 1960s but most of those agreements fizzled out with the 1973-74 Arab Oil Embargo with the Gulf/Holiday Inn arrangement ending around 1982.
Holiday Inn Express (currently known as Express by Holiday Inn outside North America, however IHG plans to standardize as Holiday Inn Express worldwide by 2010) is a mid-priced hotel chain within the IHG family of brands. As an "express" hotel, their focus is on offering solid value at a reasonable price. Standard amenities lean toward the convenient and practical which cater to business travelers and short-term stays.
Although there are no on-site restaurants and lounges, most hotels offer a fitness center, indoor swimming pools and a hot tub. Complimentary hot breakfasts are available for travelers on-the-go (including award-winning cinnamon rolls) and guests also receive complimentary toiletries, including staples such as shampoo, mouthwash, lotion and grooming items.
Because the chain has been undergoing tremendous growth, the majority of Holiday Inn Express hotels are brand new or newly renovated. Though most Holiday Inn Express hotels are smaller than their sister Holiday Inn hotels they are equally ubiquitous, conveniently located in cities and small towns alike. Their no-nonsense value offerings allow them to serve smaller markets more efficiently.
In the mid-2000s, Holiday Inn Express began producing humorous television commercials featuring "average Joes" performing extraordinary activities that only experts would know. The concept attributes these exaggerated abilities to the fact that they "stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night". The campaign reflects the brand's slogan "Stay Smart" which is still in use today.
In the summer of 2007, IHG took the "Stay Smart" theme even further. The hotel chain has teamed up with AOL and HBO's new comedy site, "This Just In", to develop a two-month daily web series called "The Smart Show". The premise of the show is a virtual tour with the two hosts on a coast-to-coast road trip exploring what's so smart about America. The idea is to showcase the diverse and non-traditional culture of "smart", such as people, places, businesses and inventions that are clever, witty, and unexpected as opposed to simply "book smart". Beginning in Boston, Massachusetts, the traveling show will stop along major metropolitan cities as well as small, back road towns on the way to Los Angeles, California, where the program ends in December 2007. Website visitors will be able to interact with the hosts, submit their own video content about smart ideas in their home towns and respond to other smart postings. In effect, the site is a forum for an open-ended conversation about the meaning of "smart".
Holiday Inn Express has also reinforced their "Stay Smart" slogan online by opening an Internet "Smart Mart" on their website allowing customers to buy showerheads, towels, toiletries, and cinnamon rolls identical to those featured at the hotels. There are over 1,500 Holiday Inn Express hotels worldwide.
External links
|
|
