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Kemmons Wilson Gives $15 million Hotel and Hospitality
School to the University of Memphis,
No Strings Attached
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." 
                    
-----To see more of The Commercial Appeal, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to
http://www.gomemphis.com 

(c) 2002, The Commercial Appeal, Memphis, Tenn. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News. 

 


Also See Kemmons Wilson School of Hospitality and Resort Management at The University of Memphis Receives $1.5M Endowment from Six Continents Hotels / Feb 2002 
Holiday Inn Has Played an Important Role in Americans' Lives Since 1952; Submit Your Essay Describing Your Favorite Experience with Holiday Inn / Feb 2002 


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