Arriving at
these standards had not been easy; until 1998 there
were 800. With the firm's international growth, this
resulted in an overly complex set of rules and exceptions.
The standards were set by the firm's senior
vice presidents and Wolf Hengst, President, Worldwide
Hotel Operations, who explained: "We had a
rule about the number of different types of bread
rolls to be served at dinner and number of bottles of
wine to be opened at lounges. But in countries where
no bread is eaten at dinner and no wine is consumed,
that's pretty stupid.