Kemmons Wilson -- who was so angered by the shabby lodgings he encountered on a family vacation in 1951 that he vowed to start a motel chain, a decision that led to Holiday Inn -- died on Wednesday at his home in Memphis. He was 90.

In his 1993 book ''The Fifties,'' David Halberstam called the Wilson family's August trek from Tennessee to Washington ''the vacation that changed the face of the American road.''

In 1952, Mr. Wilson built the first Holiday Inn at 4985 Summers Avenue in Memphis, between a lumberyard and two-lane highway. By 1959, there were 100; by 1975, 1,700. Today, there are Holiday Inns in every state and more than 50 countries.

The company estimated that 96 percent of Americans have stayed in a Holiday Inn at least once.

The proliferation of Holiday Inns was fueled by postwar American families, then growing by four million children a year, as they took to the new Interstate highway system. Railroads were fading and plane travel was still expensive, but gasoline was cheap. Station wagons were big enough for everybody, with the possible exception of frazzled parents.

On his fateful vacation, Mr. Wilson, already a millionaire home builder, was appalled at the squalor of many guest accommodations, but his anger was piqued by having to pay $2 extra for each of his five children. He told his wife that he was going to start a hotel chain, one that did not charge extra for children. His wife laughed and asked how many motels he planned. He thought 400 for starters. He took the name Holiday Inn from the 1942 Bing Crosby film, which introduced the song ''White Christmas.''

Mr. Wilson's vision transcended mere cleanliness: there would be air-conditioning, swimming pools, ice machines in the halls, dog kennels and baby cribs. Children would both stay and eat free. Travelers were to be comforted by the promise that the best surprise is no surprise, and were eventually guaranteed exactly the same thing the next night by means of the industry's first computerized reservation system.

The first inn's daily rate was $6, and increases were intended to stay below the competition -- at least until a surge of imitators went lower still.

In 1972, the cover of Time magazine called Mr. Wilson ''The Man With 300,000 Beds.'' The accompanying article declared, ''He has transformed the motel from the old wayside fleabag into the most popular home away from home.''

Charles Kemmons Wilson Jr. was born in Osceola, Ark., on Jan. 5, 1913. His father, an insurance salesman, died when he was 9. He then moved to Memphis with his mother, Ruby, where she worked as a dental assistant.

His first job was posing in an ad for Sunbeam Bread at age 5. By age 7, he was selling magazines door to door, and soon he assembled a sales force of 12. He dropped out of high school at 17 and borrowed $50 from a friend to buy a popcorn machine in a local theater. But the manager got rid of him for making more money than he did.

But the girl he hired to sell popcorn, Dorothy Lee, became his wife of 59 years. Mrs. Wilson died in 2001. Mr. Wilson is survived by his sons, Spence, Bob and Kemmons Jr.; and his daughters, Betty Moore and Carole West, all of Memphis, 14 grandchildren and 4 great-grandchildren.

From popcorn, he switched to the pinball machine business and used his first profits to pay for a house for his mother. He built the house, saving $1,700, by doing the work himself. He then mortgaged his house, which had cost him $2,700, for $6,500 and bought a jukebox business. Other ventures, from an ice cream parlor to home building, quickly followed.

After envisioning a motel chain, Mr. Wilson first tried to raise money from home builders around the country but ended up getting most of his initial capital from businessmen in the Memphis area.

Walter E. Johnson became a partner in 1954. In 1957, the company sold 120,000 shares at $9.75 a share on the first day the stock was offered to the public. At first the company owned most of the motels, but Mr. Wilson then developed another concept: the first chain of franchised motels, with a training school for franchisees, to ensure uniform quality.

Mr. Wilson resigned from Holiday Inn in 1979. His subsequent interests were far-flung, ranging from resort developments to chocolate-corn kernels to two low-priced chains of lodgings, called Wilson Inn and Wilson World. Holiday Inn is now owned by Six Continents Hotels Inc., the hotel unit of Bass P.L.C.

Mr. Wilson, whose Southern accent was often called thick enough to confuse Southerners, had a reputation for pithy aphorisms about business. The Atlanta Constitution said last year that he gave advice on franchising to his friend Ray Kroc, who turned McDonald's into a billion-dollar empire.

For all his success, Mr. Wilson acknowledged making a mistake or two. USA Today last year mentioned his short-lived plan to install trampolines at every Holiday Inn, which ended when a youngster bounced too high and crashed through Mr. Wilson's office window. He canceled his edict to keep a fly swatter in every room because it ''wasn't sending the right kind of message.''

Mr. Wilson famously advised Sam Phillips of Sun Records, also in Memphis, to sell Elvis Presley's contract to RCA for $35,000, a move Mr. Phillips estimates cost him $100 million. (Mr. Phillips, to be sure, made a killing on Holiday Inn stock.)

The New York Times in 1999 reported Mr. Wilson's thinking on Elvis: ''Hell, he can't even sing, man,'' he told Mr. Phillips. ''Take the money.''