50 Years of Days Inn
On April 10, 1970, as dawn broke over Georgia’s Tybee Island, Cecil B. Day, his wife Marian Uldine (Deen) Smith Day and their family were already hard at work. As Deen carefully opened packages of pillows and fit them with freshly-laundered cases, Cecil’s mom Kathleen Day Murray was on the mainland, waiting for the ferry in her station wagon filled with supplies. Later that day, amidst a frenzy of activity, they threw open the doors to the very first Days Inn.
Just three years later, after opening a slew of new motels along the burgeoning interstates leading to Disney World, Cecil and Deen found themselves in a very tough spot. In 1973, OPEC announced an embargo on oil exportation. By March 1974, the cost of oil had skyrocketed 400%, paralyzing the travel industry as American families curtailed vacations and businesses slashed travel budgets. Lights dimmed in Las Vegas, lines shrunk at Disney World and ski lifts shut down in Colorado.
Cecil and Deen were more prepared for the shock than most. From the beginning, they saw their motels as providing much more than a bed, a roof and a place to park. They saw them as places of healing, sustenance and comfort — way stations on the interstate that provided temporary communities for those who came to visit, complete with food, recreation and gas. Each motel had a restaurant, a swimming pool and a gas pump. If guests were lonely, depressed or anxious, they could call on-duty chaplains twenty-four hours a day for advice. If kids were bored, they could make friends with others their age by the pool. In many ways, “Day’s Inns” resembled more the communal “auto camps” of the 1930s, and less the stoic and increasingly business-oriented hotels of the 1970s.
By letting his empathetic nature guide him, Cecil Day gained an advantage over his competitors. He knew from personal experience that after long days of driving, families needed to have everything in one place. Presciently, he had purchased gas for his pumps in bulk before the embargo. As the crisis took hold, Days Inn comforted guests with assurance that they would be able to reserve tanks of gas with their rooms. It was the only motel chain that could make that guarantee.
Calls to reserve rooms quickly overwhelmed the reservation department. The company had to hire more operators to meet the demand. Those who had never heard of the chain before spent hours on the phone trying to get reservations. All told, Days Inn reported only a 15% decline in occupancy compared to the 40–50% decline reported by other chains. It weathered the storm because it best understood the needs of its guests and had planned for their comprehensive needs all along.
Cecil wasn’t just selling a hotel room. He was selling convenient, friendly, family-oriented communal experiences in otherwise unfamiliar environments. His values, ideas and motivations shaped the experiences of his guests, who still fondly recall their experiences at Days Inns, if not the actual beds they slept in. Mothers and fathers who stayed at Days Inns on family road trips remained loyal to the brand as they aged. That generational dynamic fueled one of the industry’s most influential guest loyalty programs, the September Days Club, propelling Days Inn to become one of the most recognizable hotel brands in the world by 1995.
Cecil routinely communicated his business philosophy, molded by his Christian faith, with employees, franchisees and guests. With a keen sense for the constantly shifting tectonic plates beneath his feet, he told them, “To be able to cope, we must adopt the solution always good and right regardless of the circumstances — the attitude of LOVE!”
On December 15, 1978, at the tragically young age of forty-four, Cecil died of bone cancer. In just eight years his company, governed by CEO Richard Kessler since 1975, had grown from one beach side motel into a national chain with 289 company and franchisee-owned hotels.
Though Cecil did not live to fulfill his vision to open 1000 motels, those who followed in his footsteps did it for him. His humility and compassionate nature shaped a company culture of empathy and love.
When Deen sold the company to Reliance Capital in 1984, she made sure that every employee who had worked for them for at least three years received a portion of the proceeds. When Michael A. Leven took the reins as president and COO the next year, he placed Cecil’s portrait front and center in the lobby of the Days Inn headquarters. It served as a tribute to the principled organization that Cecil, his family and his friends built.
The culture Cecil Day shaped propelled the brand through many more deep challenges over its fifty-year existence. Under Leven’s leadership in the 1980s, Days Inn wrote a $100,000 check to establish AAHOA, which has since helped generations of Asian-American hotel owners realize their American dreams. The company gave jobs to the homeless in Atlanta, and employed senior citizens and disabled individuals in its call centers.
In the early 1990s, John Snodgrass, who had been steeped in Cecil’s culture since beginning his career in the Days Inn mailroom, led the company out of bankruptcy on the strength of his relationships with franchisees. Subsequent leaders, including John Russell and Joseph R. Kane, Jr., committed themselves to maintaining Cecil’s standards of quality as properties aged and competition grew.
Today, the hospitality industry faces what could be its worst storm yet. But history shows that by facilitating a culture of empathy and love, the industry will emerge better for it. Recently, Deen reflected that her husband was “never taken up with wealth, prestige, or anything like that. He always had the idea that Days Inn should be a service to the people who came and stayed with us.” Right now, the people can’t come and stay. But by channeling industry resources to those who are the most in need as so many hotel companies have done in recent weeks, and by providing the services that people need most right now, the culture of love fostered by Cecil and so many other hospitality pioneers will endure, charting the course forward.
