Conrad Hilton started his empire from a 40-room stucco hotel in Cisco, Texas. I’ve seen this hotel – now home of the Cisco Chamber of Commerce – and it’s hard to believe that such a small hotel in a tiny town could be the birthplace of the modern hotel industry. While Hilton was running the Mobley (that was the hotel’s name), his mother told him “Conrad, if you want to build big ships, you have to go where the water’s deep”, which basically meant to take on more risk, with bigger hotels, in the big city.
