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Red Lion Hotels

hotel chain

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 16, 2026
Entity authorityQ25047720 ↗
Source-derived summary

Red Lion Hotels is a full-service, midscale hotel brand owned by Red Lion Hotels Corporation.

Red Lion competes in the moderate-priced, full-service segment of the lodging industry, along with Holiday Inn, Ramada. Its complementary brand, Red Lion Inn & Suites competes in the moderate-priced limited-service segment of the lodging industry, along with Holiday Inn Express, Comfort Inn, and La Quinta Inns & Suites. They have 53 hotels in their system with 12,344 total rooms, and 712,687 square feet of meeting space.

History

Early years

Red Lion Hotels' roots began in 1959 in the Portland metropolitan area by two local business partners, Tod McClaskey and Ed Pietz. The two had met at McClaskey's first business, the Frontier Room, in Vancouver, Washington and went on to purchase the 89-room Thunderbird Motor Inn in Portland, Oregon, located along the Willamette River, at the east end of Portland's Broadway Bridge, across the street from the Memorial Coliseum. It was the first property in what was initially called Thunderbird-Red Lion Inns.

McClaskey's business background and Pietz's construction background allowed the hotel company to grow rather quickly and the two continued constructing and acquiring motels in the Western United States under the Thunderbird name, until they ran into a situation in Medford, Oregon where a Thunderbird already existed, at which point they launched the Red Lion brand. At that point, they branded their motels under the Thunderbird name, and their full-service hotels under the Red Lion name. By the time the pair sold the company in 1984, the chain had grown to over 50 properties.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Red Lion Hotels” as hotel chain. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA dependable orientation record for establishing vocabulary, names and a first evidence trail. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1959, 1984—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1959. The account is most persuasive where Lion, Hotels and hotel can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as hotel chain. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q25047720. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1959 and 1984.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Red Lion Hotels”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Red Lion Hotels primary sources, Red Lion Hotels archive and Lion research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Red Lion Hotels”?
  2. What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
  3. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Red Lion Hotels” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.