NEW YORK — Holiday Inn, the pioneer of roadside motels more than 50 years ago, will get its first new logo as part of $1 billion in renovations planned for the chain to revive sales.

InterContinental Hotels Group Plc, the world's largest hotel company by rooms, will upgrade more than 3,000 Holiday Inns and Holiday Inns Express worldwide, the Windsor, England-based company said last week. The flowing script design on a green background logo, once featured on neon signs across America, will be replaced by a stylized white "H" on a green square.

"In many people's eyes, it's a brand of the 20th century rather than the 21st century, and it's seen as being rather dated in its home market," said Alistair Scobie, an analyst at Dresdner Kleinwort in London. "It's been a fantastic brand in its time. InterContinental considers itself a branding company, so they've got to spend money on the brands."

Holiday Inn, founded in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1952, will have "significantly higher" revenue after the renovations, InterContinental said. The chain's U.S. sales growth has trailed the company's more upscale brands, such as Crowne Plaza. The first revamped property will open in the U.S. next year, with the improvements finished across the chains by 2010.

Holiday Inn franchise owners will have to "earn" the right to hang the new logo by investing as much as $150,000 per hotel in new bedding, shower rods and landscaping, said Steve Porter, head of InterContinental's North American operations.

Porter said customers will embrace the change and dismissed comparisons to Coca-Cola Co.'s ill-fated switch to New Coke.

"We're not changing our formula, so there is a similarity but a very significant difference," Porter said. The old logo "which was right for its time, has been re-engineered so it's right for this time."

InterContinental will spend $61 million to speed the rebranding, which will be reported as a one-time charge.

Holiday Inn's third-quarter U.S. revenue per available room, a measure of rates and occupancy called revpar, rose 4.5 percent in the third quarter, compared with 5.4 percent growth for all InterContinental U.S. hotels. Crowne Plaza's revpar grew 7.7 percent, while the InterContinental brand increased 8.9 percent.

InterContinental owns, manages or franchises more than 3,800 hotels with more than 563,000 rooms in nearly 100 countries. It has sold hotels to property investors and turned to management or franchise contracts to make its revenue stream more stable.

The International Association of Holiday Inns, which represents about 3,000 of the chain's owners and operators, said in the statement that it "strongly supports this development and looks forward to the business improvement it will deliver."

Holiday Inn, with more than 3,125 hotels, was founded by Kemmons Wilson as one motel in Memphis designed to give travelers clean and affordable lodging. Bass Plc, InterContinental's now-defunct former parent company, bought Holiday Inn in 1998.