November 29, 2022 K2 Release

KOA Rewards

Over the last year, the K2 development team has been working on relocating the KOA Rewards programming from the old KampSight system to the new K2 platform. As you can imagine, this has been a huge undertaking – KOA Rewards touches many parts of the business. We are excited to release the first of several critical updates.

Overall Benefits of This Development

While a great deal of the development is ‘behind-the-scenes’ functionality, a project of this size deserves a lot fanfare. Consider the following value this work brings to KOA:

• COST SAVINGS
  This was a complete re-write of the KOA Rewards programming and moved the programming to the updated K2 platform. This means that it’s no longer on the old K1 platform. With Rewards moved off of that system, we will be able to soon ‘pull the plug’ on the K1 server and save the costs of keeping it up and running.
• NO MORE SYNCHRONIZTION
  The Rewards programming will be co-located with K2 and share the same guest data so there will no longer be the need to synchronize the databases. It also means we will have one source of “truth” for KOA Rewards guest information. Better data integrity leads to more reliable reporting, better performance, and stability.
• BUILT IN TOOLS FOR PROGRAM ADMINISTRATION
  Home Office KOA Rewards program administrators will have more control over the program than they ever had before. This means they will be able to manage important aspects of the Rewards program without waiting on development time. Additionally, the Customer Experience team was provided with a powerful toolset for managing everyday life in their call center which helps provide a better guest experience.
• BUILT FOR THE FUTURE
  Aside from moving the programming from the old system to the new, this release has a handful of changes which are detailed below. Bigger updates are scheduled to release by the beginning of March timeframe.

KOA Rewards changes in K2

Pay with Points

With this release, we’re retiring the functionality of the Value Kard Rewards Certificate (VKRC). Instead, a guest will be able to Pay with Points. It allows guests to convert their earned points into a payment towards their stay. Besides for the name change, certificates are no longer used and if the guest has a refund where points were used, the points are added back to their KOA Rewards account. There is a new notice in the reservation form when a guest has enough points to use, but the rest of the screens are the same. (Shown below for reference).

1. New messaging in the reservation form
   
2. Payment modal
   
3. Choose available reward from drop down
4. Available Rewards based on guest’s point availability
5. Points payment show separately from other payments
   

Refund KOA Rewards within a Reservation

The new programming addresses a common question we’ve received from many K2 users: “Why do I have to go into the KOA Rewards standalone menu to refund a card that we purchased or renewed within a reservation?”

• Now, the programming allows Rewards refund directly from Rewards widget in the reservation form
  
• There are new prompts to help warn or remind users when cancelling. This notice will also show for early checkouts due to the One Hour Guarantee or a Same Day Checkout.

KOA.com Account Information

With this release, ALL guests will be able to see their reservation history on their KOA.com account page, not just KOA Rewards holders.

Other Development

Credit Cards

In case you missed it at convention, KOA will be moving to a new credit card provider, Tenerum Payment Systems. This move will provide full functionality for US and Canadian campgrounds for ‘card present’ and ‘card not present’ transactions, providing tokens for each type. Additionally, we are looking forward to faster processing speeds, a competitive fee structure, and a proven support team.

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 will start in early December 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.

Guest Database Improvements

Along with the KOA Rewards project, we’ve made improvements to the Guest Database which improves the entire system. Some highlights include:

• De-duplication of guest records
  Duplications occur when there is a variation on an address or name. This project ran to identify those records and merge guests together when appropriate, greatly reducing the number of duplicate guest records.
• De-duplication of Rewards accounts
  There are times when a guest will purchase a new KOA Rewards account when they already have one. This project identified those records and merged accounts when appropriate.
• Address validation
  In order to provide clean guest data, validation processes were added anywhere a new guest record is added. This process makes sure the addresses are accurate which means our guest data is more reliable. All existing guest address information was cleansed to match the corresponding US Postal Service address.
• Connection between KOA.com Account and K2 Guest
  This project provided a link between a KOA.com account and a K2 guest which paves the way for several future enhancements. For example, with this release, all guests will be able to see their reservation history if they log in (or create) a KOA.com account.

Hot Fixes Since the Last Release

A Hotfix is something that gets pushed into the software immediately after the issue has been identified and corrected. These fixes usually represent something that must be corrected quickly and cannot wait until the next software release date.

Guest Activity Report (11/17/2022)

Due to performance issues we were seeing with the Guest Activity Report when it was run for larger date spans, we pushed a Hot Fix that addressed the report efficiency behind-the-scenes. Further improvements are being worked on.