April 25, 2023 K2 Release

PIN Debit for Tenerum

For our March 14^th release, we announced PIN Debit would be ready for use as campgrounds migrated to the Tenerum solution. It has recently come to light that this will not be the case.

Canadian Campgrounds:

We will be adding PIN Debit for the Canadian solution since they have cards that can only be processed through what is called the Interac network. We’re still waiting on the certification process to complete for the Canadian solution. In the meantime, the ‘temporary’ solution with Clover Flex will support PIN Debit transactions.

US Campgrounds:

In the US, we will not be adding PIN Debit at this time. PIN Debit runs through different networks than credit card transactions in the US. There are annual fees from debit card networks that will also need to be considered.  While we are prepared technically to initiate a PIN Debit transaction, contractual updates are needed before this can be utilized. In the meantime, we will be focusing on onboarding all campgrounds to Tenerum and will readdress PIN Debit in the US after our migration is completed.

Other Development

KOA Rewards Purchase

A unique bug was discovered for guests who had paid full stay as a deposit. When they checked in and chose to purchase a KOA Rewards card, the system correctly capped discount to $36.00 which offset the charge of the KOA Rewards with no further payment required. However, the system wasn’t assigning a KOA Account number to the guest. This has been corrected.

Performance Improvement for Charge to Site in KampStore

The KampStore Payment modal makes the user wait an unreasonable amount of time when using Charge to Site (CTS) as the payment method. The wait time is due the search field for a Person, Site Number, or Reservation. We have refactored the search and the wait time has been significantly reduced.

Guest Match

When adding a new guest, the Guest Match modal provides suggested information when it identifies a fuller address.

In some cases when ‘Use Suggested’ was chosen by the user, the labels on the phone number fields were coded (0, 1, 2) rather than the text for the phone number type. This has been corrected.

Receipt Text updates for French

Work was completed to provide French translations for various charge code characters that print on receipts. Campgrounds who select Language Support for French in their Operation Setup will now see all items on the receipt translated.

Discount Override wording change

When a change happens in the Stay Information that causes the Discount to no longer be valid, we’ve added extra wording to the error message to help the user know what further action they need to take.

Coming Soon – Guest Notification

With the work completed on the guest database in 2021, the foundation for the guest to be involved in their own guest information was laid. Having the guest involved will increase overall accuracy of their information and provide a better view into the camping habits of our guests.

Within the next couple of months, we will be taking a couple of small but crucial next steps for our guest database. First, we will require a guest to have a unique email address. A recent analysis of our reservations at the system level shows that 70% of our reservations are made on KOA.com. A unique email address is already required there. By adding this requirement to the remaining 30% of incoming reservations, we bring consistency between KOA.com and the front desk. Among other things, this small step sets the stage for us to be able to provide the guest the ability to manage their own reservations online in the future. Additionally, we will be adding Guest Notification to K2. Like many other companies in the business world today, KOA will notify a guest when their information has changed and allow them the opportunity through their KOA.com account to manage that information. Below is a real-world example to illustrate this kind of notification.