Christopher Gistis is a native of Greece, who came to America with his family at age 12, having grown up in places with no electricity or running water. Now Linchris, 68, has both — and plenty of places that have them. He is chief executive of Hanover-based Linchris Hotel Corp., which manages and/or owns 36 hotels in New England, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Georgia, and Florida. Its most recent acquisition was the former Radisson in Plymouth, now called Hotel 1620. We spoke to Gistis, a Plymouth resident, for this story.

Q. Why did your family come to America?

A. There were five of us, I was the middle child, and our parents wanted to give us a better life. We all got college degrees. I started in the hotel business as a management trainee after graduating from Boston University and worked my way up to executive vice president. I went on my own in 1985, when I started Linchris.

Q. You started strictly managing other hotels?

A. Yes, I had no money to buy hotels. Today, of the 36 we manage, we own 26 through various partnerships.

Q. How has company growth been?

A. It’s been steady. We got Hotel 1620 in November and have allocated­ $5.7 million in renovations, which includes all the guest rooms, public spaces, ­restaurant, and the ballroom, which when done will be the largest south of Braintree, I believe. We’re renovating our Rockland property and switching franchises to Doubletree Hilton, and we acquired Hotel Providence in December. We closed on 10 properties in the past year, totaling $132 million.

Q. Do you have many employees who’ve been with you a long time?

A. At the corporate level, where we have 29 people; the average tenure is 25 years. My oldest son, Glenn, is our CFO and he’s a relative newbie; he’s only been here 18 years. We pride ourselves on customer service, but we first take care of our employees and go out of our way to identify and develop those with career potential. Most of our general managers started as line-level employees, and two of our female managers started as housekeepers. Our philosophy is we don’t hire for skills, but attitude. What we do we can teach, but you can’t teach good attitude.

Q. Do you have any plans to ­retire?

A. None; I’ve no intention of stopping any time soon. I enjoy what I do and the people I work with.

Paul E. Kandarian can be reached at pkandarian@aol.com.