The Hotel Revolution
DID YOU HEAR THE STORY OF THE BANKER WHO GREW SO TIRED of waiting for a room at a Texas hotel that he simply decided to buy the place?
That’s not a joke. It’s how Conrad Hilton started his hotel business during the remarkably inventive 40-year period of American history (1880–1920) that included world-changing innovations such as Thomas Edison pioneering the distribution of electric power to cities and Henry Ford devising a radical system to mass-produce cars. But Hilton’s contribution to shaping the modern world wasn’t an invention. It was, as he called it, a vision: “To fill the earth with the light and warmth of hospitality.”
Hilton’s 1919 version of a beta test—the Mobley in Cisco, Texas; the very hotel that had kept him waiting—was guided by his vision of upending widely accepted practices so that travelers had a consistent, welcoming environment in which to rest and relax. As a proving ground for Conrad Hilton’s breakthrough ideas, the Mobley was an unequivocal success. And by 1923, Hilton was running five hotels in Texas.
Today the company that bears his name has grown to oversee 13 brands, which include 4,660 hotels and timeshare properties representing a jaw-dropping 765,000 rooms in 102 countries and territories. And Hilton is still driven by the very modern belief that dawned on its founder during that frustrating wait in Cisco: There must be a better way.
Brave in the New World
LIVING IN AN
