A station-wagon trip, an island site and a family at work.

Days Inn grew out of a family holiday. Writing in LODGING in November 2017, Mark Young, director of the Hospitality Industry Archives at the University of Houston’s Conrad N. Hilton College, said that after Cecil B. Day sold his real-estate holdings in Georgia he loaded his family into a station wagon for a cross-country trip, and found few hotels along the highway that were both moderately priced and clean. It was on that trip, in 1969, that Day, who had never operated a hotel, decided to enter the lodging business. English Wikipedia says Day had built and developed apartment complexes in Atlanta and had owned fast-food restaurants in the city before turning to motels.

He chose an unlikely site. Day opened the original Days Inn on Tybee Island, Georgia, in 1970, a location he was told would not succeed, Young wrote. Wikipedia, drawing on a 1990 biography written by Day’s son with John McCollister, adds family detail: Day proposed the motel as a use for land he owned on the island; when it opened he could not find maid service, so his children made up the beds; and because the furniture truck was too heavy for the bridge onto the island, Day’s mother hauled furniture over in her station wagon. A second Days Inn followed later in 1970 at Forsyth, Georgia, on the interstate.

The format was built around families on the road. Young wrote that Days Inn eliminated lobbies, convention facilities, room service and bellhops, and offered instead a swimming pool for families, a playground for children, and a restaurant and gift shop. Wikipedia says that from Forsyth onward many properties combined the restaurant and shop under the name Tasty World, that Day, who did not drink, refused to sell alcohol there, and that Forsyth and many later motels had gasoline pumps for guests. Patrick Breen, then president of Days Inn, told LODGING in 2020 that during the fuel shortage of the 1970s every Days Inn had a gas station.

Day’s Christian faith shaped the rooms too. Young wrote that Bibles were placed in guest rooms and guests were encouraged to take them when they checked out, and that the chain offered discounts to senior citizens. He also recorded Day’s often-quoted philosophy: “find a need then fill it.”

Franchising, Reliance Capital, HFS and Wyndham.

Growth came through franchising. Young wrote that Days Inn had begun selling franchises by 1972, that Day’s methods included signing up independent hotel operators and offering franchisees reduced rates compared with other chains, and that he concentrated growth along the interstate highways, often in small towns overlooked by larger chains, rather than in big cities already served by other brands. Early properties were largely in the Southeast, with others in the Midwest, Texas and California.

Ownership then changed several times. Young’s 2017 history says the company was sold in September 1984 to Reliance Capital Group. In a 2020 LODGING feature marking the brand’s 50th anniversary, Mike Leven, who became president in 1985, recalled that during his tenure the company sold properties to Asian American owners and secured sites in major cities including Chicago, Boston, New York, Minneapolis and Detroit, and that he co-founded the Asian American Hotel Owners Association. Wikipedia says the later owners, the Tollman-Hundley group, took Days Inn of America into bankruptcy in 1991 and sold it to Hospitality Franchise Systems; Young dates the Hospitality Franchise Systems purchase to 1992.

Hospitality Franchise Systems became part of Cendant, and Days Inn is now a brand of Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, headquartered in Parsippany, New Jersey, according to Wikipedia. In April 2018 the chain took the name Days Inn by Wyndham. Hotel Designs reported on 13 April 2018 that Days Inn, Super 8, Travelodge and other Wyndham Hotel Group brands had begun adding the “by Wyndham” suffix to their names and signage, with updated names and logos online from 16 April and new signs available to order immediately in North America.

The brand reached 50 in 2020, during the pandemic. Breen told LODGING that June: “There will come a moment to celebrate, when the pandemic is behind us and our lives regain some balance, but now is not that moment.”

Design and documentation.

The brands in this group are motel and economy hotel names: chains of roadside and city lodgings, many of them run by franchisees under a name owned by another company. A brand of this kind lives in a sequence of physical places rather than in a single package, and each place carries the name in a different way.

The pylon sign is one of them: a tall post or panel set beside a highway or an exit ramp, designed to be read from a moving car and often lit after dark, so a wordmark and its colours have to work at a distance. Closer in, a canopy over the entrance, a sign on the building itself and the lobby door repeat the mark at a smaller scale. Inside, the front desk, the key card, the room directory and the linen take the same name into the room. Some chains add a mascot, which can appear on signs and in advertising alike.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding, its owners and franchisors, and changes to its name, sign and identity — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A sun, a familiar shape and a sunny song.

The Days Inn identity is built around a sun. In a release dated 14 February 2007, the company described a new logo unveiled to owners and managers at its international conference, “featuring a friendly modern typeface and bright yellows contrasting with a deep blue.” Chris Trick, then vice president of marketing, said the design aimed to give the brand appeal to a new generation of travellers “while retaining the equity of its signature yellow sunburst and original shape.” He added: “We kept what was good and powerful in our logo – the unique and familiar shape and the warm yellow sun – but freshened up the look.”

The decision to keep the outline was practical as well as visual. Trick said that by preserving the shape of the logo the company kept signage replacement costs down, because franchisees did not need to replace the physical sign container if it was still in good condition. Joseph Kane Jr., then president of Days Inn, told the conference that nothing would generate interest in the brand faster than “a fresh, new sign.”

The sun ran through the language as well. The same release named the brand’s service pledge “A Promise as Sure as the Sun,” and said its refreshed advertising would continue to use a stylised version of “Keep on the Sunny Side,” now featuring actual Days Inn guests rather than paid actors. The release also named the brand’s breakfast programme DayBreak.

Eleven years later the mark gained its suffix, when Wyndham’s 2018 renaming put “by Wyndham” beneath the Days Inn name on signs and websites.

For a design guide, Days Inn shows how a founder’s surname can become a whole vocabulary of mornings, suns and sunny songs, and how keeping a sign’s silhouette can let an identity change without leaving the roadside. Compare it with Super 8 and Travelodge, which took the “by Wyndham” suffix at the same time. For this guide we use deep blue, sunburst yellow and morning orange with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Days Inn’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.