Behavior Management in the Public Accommodations Industry

Abstract

A combined performance feedback and token economy intervention was used in three programs to markedly improve the cleaning activities of various housekeeping personnel in a large, urban hotel. In the prototype project, the housekeeping functions of mom attendants were categorized in terms of a 70-point checklist of specific, behaviorally defined, objectives. The full List was divided into three sublists corresponding to separate parts of a room. A combined intrasubject-replications design with changing criterion, multiple-baseline, withdrawal, and transfer-test components was utilized. According to this procedure, the intervention was introduced sequentially across the three sublists in a temporally staggered manner. At each stage, the requirements of the next sublist were simply accumulated with extant requirements and token-economy criterion levels were adjusted accordingly. Periods of program withdrawal were introduced during each stage as well as transfer tests involving rooms cleaned by attendants but not subsumed by the program. Finally, a maintenance phase was introduced. Results indicated that performance change on each sublist for all subjects was highly correlated with the application of the intervention and was maintained thereafter. Performance declined during withdrawal periods, and offer improved progressively for each sublist throughout the program. Two subsequent projects illustrated the applicability of this program to hotel housemen and bellmen.