[photopress:Holidayinn.jpg,full,alignright]Holiday Inn Hotels & Resorts has been given the China Hotel Pioneer Award at the China Hotel Development and Financing Seminar. Holiday Inn in China was, indeed, one of the first international hotel brands to establish its presence on the mainland. The Holiday Inn Lido Beijing, shown here, opened in 1984. A. Patrick Imbardelli, chief executive, InterContinental Hotels Group Asia Pacific made the acceptance speech.
A little history:
- InterContinental began when Pan American Airlines (now defunct) decided there was a lack of quality hotels in many of its destinations. The first hotel, the Hotel Grande, opened in 1946 in Belem, Brazil. Which means the company has been going sixty years.
- In 1998 the company was purchased by Bass Hotels & Resorts of the United Kingdom and renamed the InterContinental Hotels Group. If you include the Bass part into its heritage the group has been going since 1777, for that was when William Bass started making beer in Burton in England which was the start of what eventually became Bass Hotels and Resorts. There have since been splits with the drinks going in one direction and the hotels in another but the hotel part now runs InterContinental, Crowne Plaza, Holiday Inn and some other, smaller, groups.
- The original Holiday Inn chain of hotels was founded in 1952 in Memphis, Tennessee and was named after a 1942 movie of that title which starred Bing Crosby.
So the China Hotel Pioneer Award went, in effect, to a company that has been around, in one way or another, for something over two centuries and in China for 22 years.
Source: Travel Daily News.
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