February 21, 2023 K2 Release

KOA Rewards

The KOA Rewards program will take another big step with this release by completing a two year cross-company project to improve the program.

It’s no news that this work has been happening. From convention presentations to KOA-U training, we’ve kept the system up to date on the progress. Consider the changes that have been made so far:
• Name: Value Kard Rewards became KOA Rewards
• Moved KOA Rewards programming off the old KampSight platform onto the new K2 platform
• Incorporated Rewards enrollment as part of the Guest database
• Add Pay with Points
• Provided the ability to refund a Rewards account from within a reservation rather than a separate screen
• Update koa.com/account data to include stay information for all guests, not just Rewards guests

New Terms & Conditions

Because the KOA Rewards program is changing key parts of its structure, the legal Terms & Conditions were updated. Guests with existing accounts will be given the opportunity to view and accept the new conditions. KOA will email account holders with a link to a KOA.com landing page with the new Terms & Conditions and provide a way to accept or decline the rules. No action is required on their part to remain in the program.

However, if they Decline the new conditions, programming in K2 and on KOA.com will not allow the renewal. In this situation, you will see the following message in K2:

All NEW cards sold starting on February 21st will automatically be sold under the new Terms & Conditions.

 
Earning Tiers/Point Structure Updates

The points structure has been updated to be more simple to use and understand. The Bonus tier level was removed and the earning pace for Base and VIP were adjusted. The chart below shows the new earning structure.

Note: Any guest who signed up under the original Value Kard Rewards program will continue to earn points under the old points structure until their account expires or is renewed into the new program.

Pay with Points for KOA.com Reservations

Now guests can use points when they make their reservations on KOA.com or the App. It will reduce the total amount of the estimated charges for their reservation.

There are some additional rules to note:
• Most sites require a deposit. If a deposit is required for a stay, the guest will still have to provide payment. This use of points does not replace taking a valid credit card payment for the deposit due.
• Points are not actually ‘spent’ when the guest makes their reservation. They are held (protected from use) until the guest checks in or cancels their reservation.
• At check in, the points are converted to a payment towards the cost of their stay and follow all of the rules of Pay with Points that we’ve been using.

When the guest checks in at the front desk, the user will see a notice in the Payments widget that alerts them to the fact that the guest has chosen to apply points to this stay and the total amount for the payment. The user can either Confirm the use of points or Release the points if the guest changes their mind.

Once confirmed, the points are processed as a payment against the stay charges and prefills the Payment modal.

 
Other Development

Pay with Points modal

A minor issue was discovered in the payment modal when using Pay with Points. The Guest Information (Name, Rewards #, Points) were overlapping in the screen. This has been corrected.

Waitlist calendar bug

Another minor bug was addressed – when selecting the expiration date for the Waitlist entry, the date-picker was not functioning correctly. If the user scrolled up or down in the screen, the calendar pop-up would follow instead of remaining ‘attached’ to the date field. This has been corrected.

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.

Credit Cards

Progress is being made on switching over to our new credit card provider – Tenerum. To date, we have five of our OAK properties live and processing payments. The system is very stable and quick for card-present transactions. We are monitoring the performance with the integration and the speed of the transactions and plan to do some load testing. Once we’re satisfied with the results, we will continue with adding our OAK properties and then move on to the franchise system.

The transition will be facilitated and managed by our service partner – Chosen Payments of Utah – who will guide KOA Franchisees through obtaining a new merchant account and purchasing new PIN Pad devices. We started with our OAK properties and will push to have the entire system on by the start of camping season 2023. More information will be available on eKamp in the coming weeks.