Ramada Inns, Inc. - Specimen Stock Certificate - Famous Hotel Chain

Specimen Stock printed by Security-Columbian United States Banknote Corporation. Ramada is a large American multinational hotel chain owned by Wyndham Hotels & Resorts. As of December 31, 2022, it operates 851 hotels with 120,344 rooms across 63 countries under the Ramada brand. The Ramada name derives from the Spanish term rama (meaning "branch"). Temporary open-air structures called "ramadas" (meaning "porch" or "arbor"), made of brush or branches (similar to an arbor) were popular in Arizona during harvest time. Company websites commonly refer to the structure as a "shady resting place".

Longtime Chicago restaurateur Marion W. Isbell (1905–1988) founded the chain in 1953 along with a group of investors including Michael Robinson of McAllen, Texas (who later went on to start Rodeway Inns in the early 1960s) and Del Webb of Phoenix (who owned the New York Yankees and went on to establish his own lodging chain, Hiway House, in 1956). Other original investors of Ramada Inns included Isbell's brother-in-law Bill Helsing; Max Sherman, a produce operator from Chicago dubbed "The Tomato King"; Chicago attorneys Ezra Ressman and Mort Levin; and Frank Lichtenstein and Robert Rosow of San Antonio, Texas. Read more at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramada