Kemmons Wilson

"CHECKING INTO WILSON'S WORLD"
Lodging Hospitality
The Business Monthly Of Development,
Operations And Marketing
November 1994
By Carlo Wolff

Holiday Inn founder Kemmons Wilson is still hustling at age 81.

At luxury hotels, you expect roomservice to be personalized, even sumptuous. But the roomservice Michael Leven experienced at the hands of Charles Kemmons Wilson Jr. bordered on the ridiculous-and the wonderful.

The incident took place in October 1990, shortly after the London-based Bass Ltd. bought Holiday Inn Worldwide, the chain Kemmons Wilson founded in 1952. Leven, then the president of the franchise division of Holiday Inn, had flown to Memphis to meet Wilson, whom many credit with inventing the modern motel.

After visiting Wilson at his suburban headquarters, Leven agreed to join him for dinner before leaving town to make a speech. Wilson installed him in a Wilson World hotel near the airport.

"Prior to dinner, I got very ill," says Leven. "I had food poisoning from chicken I'd eaten that afternoon."

After Wilson made sure Leven was comfortable, he phoned Leven's wife to inform her of his condition. When Wilson asked Leven whether he'd like some tea and toast, Leven weakly nodded assent. Almost 10 minutes later, the door opened.

"There was Kemmons Wilson with a tray and tea," Leven says. "Then he arranged for a private plane-I paid for it-so I could get to Orlando."

Kemmons Wilson is a short man with hair the color of taffy who runs more than 60 companies from his Memphis headquarters. In addition to the Wilson World hotel chain, the operations span a printing plant; a nursing home; a lumber yard; a corn-roasting subsidiary for Wilson's latest venture, chocolate-coated corn kernel called W & Ws ("I can't help it if you turn them upside down and they say M & Ms," Wilson says); various types of real estate, including suburban strip malls; a contracting operation producing about 100 homes a year in Sarasota, FL; and the Orange Lake Country Club in suburban Orlando, which he claims is the largest timeshare resort in the country.

Low-key yet tireless, extraordinarily inquisitive, unafraid to take risks, Wilson runs a veritable empire.

Born an only child in Osceola, AR in 1913, Wilson lost his father, an insurance salesman, when Kemmons was an infant of nine months.

Wilson grew up hungry. He also grew up anxious to please his mother, Ruby, who was better-known by her nickname, Doll. Her portrait hangs above his cluttered desk. Her memory guides his every move.

"What I regret is, I never knew my father," he says. "My mother had to work so hard, she couldn't spend any time with me."

A consummate raconteur and passable pianist, Kemmons Wilson is a family man who loves doing business. His favorite pastime is concocting deals. Not to mention closing them.

Wilson's common-sense sensibility germinated during the early years of the Depression. His first venture-at age 7-was selling the Saturday Evening Post door to door.

He sold the magazines for a nickel, keeping a penny for himself. The deal was even simpler peddling the Ladies' Home Journal. "I found out if you sold the Ladies' Home Journal, you could have people selling under you. I got three cents, gave them two cents. I had about 12 guys selling under me.

"A deal is using your brain," Wilson says in a motivational video that runs on the television in his Wilson World hotels. "A deal is just really fun."

At age 14, a serious accident kept Wilson in a body cast for 11 months. He still walks with a limp.

His second business venture, after he dropped out of high school at age 17, was selling popcorn outside a movie theater; that only lasted a few months, because the theater owner shut it down once he realized Wilson was making more money than the theater itself.

For Kemmons Wilson, founding Holiday Inn wasn't enough. Now in his 80s, this legendary entrepreneur still can't tell the difference between work and play.

Kemmons and Doll lived in a duplex apartment in Memphis in the early '30s, paying rent of $25 a month. They subsisted on lima beans, which they bought for a nickel a pound.

He's always had a way with a dollar. He buys his Hart Schaffner & Marx suits on sale, acquiring the Lincoln Town Cars he favors, slightly used, for $22,000 or so.

"I grew up hungry, I still watch my money," Wilson says. He speaks with the wisdom of aphorism, the rhythm of homily.

In 1933, Wilson ventured into construction, building his first house for $1,700 plus $1,000 for the land.

Wilson's business cards outpace inflation.

After building that house for his mother, Wilson borrowed $6,500 against it to get into the jukebox distribution business. That is the way he learned that leverage makes the world go around.

"If a man can buy a lot for $1,000, build a house for $1,700 and borrow $6,500, that's the business for me."

He cut costs, not corners. In fact, he stretched dollars by stretching space. By the early '50s, Wilson was building about 1,000 homes a year.

"I learned in the early days that the space in the middle of a house didn't cost nearly as much as the other space in the house," Wilson says. "You've go the same number of light fixtures, electrical outlets, doors and bathrooms, no matter how big the room. So if you build a room that's 12 by 15 feet, and you stretch it out to 18 feet, it won't cost very much more."

After Wilson and a writer have dinner at Memphis' fabled rib joint, the Rendezvous, he pays with a Visa credit card. He rarely carries cash, he says. Small wonder; the credit card is backed by Federal Savings Bank. Wilson owns all 10 branches of that bank.

As of 1972, his worth was estimated at $200 million. Wilson will not say what he's worth now, only that he's passed on the bulk of his businesses to the five children he brought up with Dorothy, his wife of nearly 53 years. "I'm getting ready to die," Wilson says. "When you get to be 81 years old, you better be prepared, or Uncle Sam will get everything.

At 52, Spence is the oldest son, president of the umbrella firm Kemmons Wilson, Inc. Robert Allen, 50, and Kemmons Jr., 48, are vice presidents; Betty Moore, 46, is the wife of a Memphis banking executive; and Carole West, 45, is married to a Memphis oncologist.

Doll looks on proudly as her boy runs his vast, diverse business empire.

There are 14 grandchildren. The family gets together almost every weekend, either at Kemmons' and Dorothy's 6,000-square-foot home in the Red Acres section of Memphis or at one of the kids' houses.

It was 1951, the twilight of Harry Truman's presidency. The seven Wilsons decided to visit Washington on vacation. Everywhere that they went, they'd check in, pay $6 to $8 a room, then discover that each kid cost $2 extra-which, in the Wilson family case, jacked up the price considerably.

A riled Wilson vowed to develop a chain of hotels where kids could stay free as long as they slept in the same room as their parents. Wilson's hotels would also feature free parking, air conditioning, free in-room TV and a swimming pool.

To realize that vision, Wilson borrowed $365,000, and built his first motel, naming it the Holiday Inn Hotel Court after a Bing Crosby film.

A VIEW OF THE WILSON KINGDOM

Known in the industry for his sharp eye, Kemmons Wilson feels there still are prime locations to build new hotels.

Take the 250-room Wilson Suites he's building on Stemmons Freeway in Dallas. Scheduled to open in January, it will cater to the business traveler, renting suites for about $75 a night.

Located at the heart of Dallas' business district, the property should do just fine, Wilson figures. Its closest competition rents suites for about $150 a night.

Wilson bought four acres on which the property is located from the Resolution Trust Corp. He thinks he got a good deal. "You never know until you have it finished and find out whether you got business," he cautions.

"I think the lodging business is in recovery right now, and we're going to start building some more." Wilson says. If this first Wilson Suites is successful, there likely will be more; Wilson is looking at two more potential Wilson Suites locations.

He owns five Wilson World Hotels, full-service properties that rent rooms for about $50. The 11 limited-service Wilson Inns he owns rent rooms for about $40 and offer free continental breakfast along the lines of Hampton Inns.

Wilson also owns 10 Holiday Inn franchises, as well as one Ramada Inn franchise. All of Wilson's hotel concerns are in the Southwest.

His other interests include the Pine Bluff, AR Convention Center; the Orange Lake Country Club in Kissimmee, FL; an oil-drilling operation in Rapides Parish, LA being developed by Occidental Petroleum; and a deep-mine coal operation in the Fort Smith area of Arkansas.

In addition, he is developing a strip mall and a housing subdivision in Memphis. In 1993, the gross revenues of the privately held Kemmons Wilson Companies was $190 million, $35 million less than in 1992. He employs 600 people in Memphis, 2700 throughout his operations.

Wilson doesn't advertise much. "We have a good sales organization and a real value," he says. "So if you come to one of our hotels once, you come back."