Holiday Inn is a brand name applied to hotels within the InterContinental Hotels Group. The original Holiday Inn chain of hotels was founded in 1952 in Memphis, Tennessee by homebuilder Kemmons Wilson to provide inexpensive family accommodation for travellers within the USA. The first Holiday Inn was built by Wilson on Sumner Avenue in Memphis on the main road to and from Nashville.

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.. Today there are many spread out across the globe, in Australia there are a total of 16, all of which are mostly located in State and Regional cities.