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Last Updated: Jul 2nd, 2008 - 21:15:22 |
(NAPSI)-Some of the most interesting stories can come from surprising places.
Chicago native Eileen Richmond needed a towel in a pinch. Her 7-year-old son was appearing in his school play as the Little Drummer Boy, so she headed to her linen closet to complete his costume.
"During the play, my mom leaned over and pointed out something odd about my son's towel-it had a nice, wide, green stripe in the center that read 'Holiday Inn,'" Eileen recounts.
Twenty-four years later, that event, and other true accounts like it, are in a book that traces the 53-year history of Holiday Inn through the stories of the guests who have "borrowed" the now- iconic green-striped towels.
"About the towels, we forgive you: Absorbing Tales of Borrowed Towels" is a collection of stories shared by Holiday Inn guests seeking amnesty for their towel-taking.
"This book is not as much a celebration of the Holiday Inn towel as it is a celebration of the very people who possess them," said Mark Snyder, senior vice president, brand management, Holiday Inn Hotels & Resorts.
"The towels are physical reminders of fond and special memories that live on in the hearts and minds of their owners."
Peter Greenberg, travel editor of NBC-TV's "Today" show and the author of "Hotel Secrets From the Travel Detective," wrote the book's foreword. In it, he admits to having two Holiday Inn towels that followed him home after a business trip in 1972.
"Travelers have had a love affair with that Holiday Inn towel, and that emotional connection with a hotel brand has fueled its enduring, rich and permanent place in Americana," Greenberg writes.
Holiday Inn gave travelers a chance to tell their towel stories-funny, romantic, touching-when it declared Aug. 28, 2003 "Towel Amnesty Day." Holiday Inn also donated $1 and matched the donation for each towel story that was submitted. After receiving thousands of entries, Holiday Inn decided to publish the 90-page, color coffee table book to reminisce about days, and towels, gone by.
The book sells for $25 online at www.holiday-inn.com/towels. The first 1,000 people who purchase the book will receive a limited-edition Holiday Inn keepsake hand towel.
Sixty percent of the proceeds will go to "Give Kids the World," a nonprofit resort in Orlando, Fla. that gives vacations to children with life-threatening illnesses.
Well-traveled towels' stories are at last being told.
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