They started in the food and beverages business running the successful Eddy’s Restaurant in Kansas City, Missouri.
The influx of visitors never happened as thousands of competing hotel and motel rooms were built on International Drive and along Kissimmee’s Highway 192.
The Parliament House began to cater to the seedier clientele of prostitutes who settled into the declining area of Orange Blossom Trail.
It featured the Baron of Beef Restaurant, Sidewalk Cafe, Cork Room, and Once a Knight Lounge.
Guest room telephones were among the first to feature direct room-to-room calling and a flashing message light.
[1] The first 120 room beach front Parliament House in Clearwater Beach, Florida opened in 1963 adjacent to the newly built Clearwater Pass toll bridge,[2] but fell into receivership and became a Hilton hotel franchise on December 11, 1965.
It was built at a cost of $900,000 and also included the popular Baron of Beef restaurant run by head chef Otto Schmidt (from Miami Beach) and featured Kansas City Sirloins.
It eventually became known as the Holiday Inn Sunspree Resort, which was demolished along with the adjacent Adam’s Mark hotel to make way for a condominium project in 2007.
Construction of the 120 room Augusta, Georgia Parliament House started on December 16, 1963 on Broad and Ellis Street.
That Atlanta, Georgia Parliament House later became the Ramada Inn on 70 John Wesley Dobbs Avenue.