Holiday Inn founder will leave his empire
the way he began it -
with a precedent.
By Ruma Banerji, The Commercial Appeal, Memphis, Tenn.
Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
April 2, 2002 - "This is my final deal," he said of his $15 million
hotel and hospitality school on the University of Memphis campus. "This
is very special to me."
Wilson, 89, who revolutionized the hospitality industry by nationally
standardizing hotel room size and quality, has built a hospitality school
and hotel combo that some are calling unprecedented.
The hotel opened for business Monday and will hold a black-tie gala
July 31, the day before Holiday Inn celebrates 50 years in the industry.
The hospitality school begins classes this fall.
The Kemmons Wilson School of Hotel & Resort Management is a professionally
run hotel that has classrooms for University of Memphis students who want
to learn the nuts and bolts of hotel operation first-hand.
Although students will not be running any aspect of the hotel for class,
they will be employed in the hotel through internships and part-time jobs.
The newly hired director of the hospitality program said this school-in-a-hotel
setup is unlike anything he's seen.
"There are schools that have hotels on campus, but you don't see classrooms
in a hotel," said Bob O'Halloran, who teaches hospitality in the State
University of New York and will join the U of M in the summer. "That
kind of setup brings realism into education."
Fogelman College of Business and Economics dean John Pepin said there
are at least nine students who've already declared their interest in hospitality
careers.
He anticipates roughly 20 students in the program this fall and expects
the program to quadruple in five years.
"Hospitality is a big, big market," Pepin said. "It's one of the seven
top revenue producers in the state."
The Wilson hotel and school, which will work with the Fogelman Executive
Conference Center to host various community and regional events, will place
students on a fast track into hospitality careers.
"This is the kind of business where you have to work your way up from
the bottom," said Lorna Brown-Ray, marketing director for the hotel.
"This school will help them graduate and be qualified to fill lower-level
management positions, so it helps them bypass some of the lower ranks."
Although hotel officials haven't begun marketing it full strength yet,
they've already managed to sell out the hotel for more than three dozen
weddings and conferences in April, May and June, Brown-Ray said.
Brown-Ray said she plans on marketing the hotel - which has 82 two-room
suites and a banquet room that seats 1,000 - like any other hotel in the
community. Single rooms go for $95 a night, doubles go for $105 and the
two presidential suites go for $150 a night.
"There has been this misconception that we'll have students running
this thing and this isn't a real hotel," Brown-Ray said. "That couldn't
be further from the truth. Professionals will run this. Mr. Wilson wants
students to see this as the leading example of how a hotel should run."
Over the next five years the Wilson hotel is expected to have a $65
million economic impact in the community, creating roughly 100 jobs and
generating millions in tax revenue, said Patrick E. Culligan, president
of The Hospitality Consulting Group Inc. and partner in The Wilson Conference
Center Group. The group has been tapped to run the hotel.
The 138,000-square-foot hotel is neither the largest nor the most lavish
of Wilson's 3,000 hotels worldwide, yet he admits this one is particularly
special to him.
Wilson is quiet about why the hotel means so much to him, diverting
attention to the size of the ballroom and its grand chandeliers instead.
He doesn't have to say much. His affection for the hotel shows in his
daily, hour-long visits to the hotel, even though his health and age leave
him weary sometimes.
He rides a gleaming red motorized chair so he can inspect every nook
and cranny of the hotel. During its construction, he ritually inspected
every detail from the texture of the bedspreads in the suites to the paper
towel dispensers in the bathrooms.
"I think his pride was in giving it to the school, no strings attached,"
marketing director Brown-Ray said, as she watched Wilson tour the floor
that will hold personal memorabilia from his life and work with Holiday
Inn.
"This is his way of keeping his love for the industry going."
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(c) 2002, The Commercial Appeal, Memphis, Tenn. Distributed by Knight
Ridder/Tribune Business News. |