What does /* at end of file path mean for chmod?

I'm following a guide for installing tomcat on ubuntu, and I'm stuck on a step which is to run the following command:

sudo chmod g+r conf/*

What does the /* mean? Does it mean make the change for all files in the /conf folder? When I run the command, I get the following error:

chmod: cannot access 'conf/*': No such file or directory

this is what the folder looks like:

bin  conf  lib  LICENSE  logs  ...

so the /conf folder is in there - other commands I run on the folder work ok:

sudo chgrp -R tomcat conf
sudo chmod g+rwx conf

The guide is here:

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-apache-tomcat-8-on-ubuntu-16-04

I'm at "Step 4: Update Permissions".

Here is an ls -la of the /opt/tomcat folder:

drwxr-xr-x 9 root root    4096 Aug 15 03:15 .
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root    4096 Aug 15 03:14 ..
drwxr-x--- 2 root root    4096 Aug 15 03:15 bin
drwxrwx--- 2 root tomcat  4096 Jul  6 08:45 conf
drwxr-x--- 2 root root    4096 Aug 15 03:15 lib
-rw-r----- 1 root root   57092 Jul  6 08:45 LICENSE
drwxr-x--- 2 root root    4096 Jul  6 08:43 logs
-rw-r----- 1 root root    1723 Jul  6 08:45 NOTICE
-rw-r----- 1 root root    7063 Jul  6 08:45 RELEASE-NOTES
-rw-r----- 1 root root   15946 Jul  6 08:45 RUNNING.txt
drwxr-x--- 2 root root    4096 Aug 15 03:15 temp
drwxr-x--- 7 root root    4096 Jul  6 08:44 webapps
drwxr-x--- 2 root root    4096 Jul  6 08:43 work

Thanks

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