It is hard to believe that these chains like HI, Marriott and Hilton were born in the 50s and have grown the way they have to revolutionize the hotel industry. Today most people take these chains for granted, but those of us who can actually remember travelling back in those years well know the variable standards that were found in cities and along the interstate highway system that itself was just developing over that post-war decade.

While the HI image was ridiculed by some, and the sameness bemoned, they provided an affordable, reliable form of accommodation, without the "surprises" one didn't need after a long day of driving. Much has changed, of course. Standards continually rising, and upper end chains emerging within all groups.

So we owe a debt of gratitude to men like Wilson, Bill Marriott and Conrad Hilton. They made the travel we now take for granted a reality. [And their formula was then copied a couple of decades later in the food industry, giving us Macdonalds, for better or worse, and the myriad of other franchises we have come to love and hate.]