Update: As of March 18th, KOA.com appears to be working again.
KOA.com, the website of Kampgrounds of America (KOA) has experienced an outage since Wednesday morning. This main website is where millions of campers go to reserve their stays for over 500 campgrounds across the United States and Canada. This leaves all of those campgrounds without a way to accept online bookings, but campers can still reserve by phone or via email.
“While teams across our home office are diligently working behind the scenes to get us back up and running online, we, unfortunately, are learning this outage could last for an extended period of time,” said Diane Eichler, KOA’s VP of Marketing.
Park owners can still manage bookings as K2 is unaffected, Eichler said.
KOA team members are currently working on getting the website up and running. As per an email to its members, KOA is working to provide temporary landing pages, reservation support, and third-party listing service.
Temporary landing pages are being created to deliver guests the information needed to book camping trips. The first, and most critical, is a main page with a campground directory suggesting campers call campgrounds directly to secure a reservation.
Reservation support has also been added to service call volume. KOA’s Camper Experience Team has been activated in this situation to book campground reservations for park owners through K2. Staff has been added to the team to better serve guests and campgrounds.
KOA also activated a third-party listing service to steer guests to active pages about members’ campgrounds.
Furthermore, KOA suggested that park owners should:
- Activate additional staffing for phones if call volumes increase significantly.
- Add a post to their Facebook page and social media suggesting campers call to book with them.
- Update voicemail message that communicates the situation clearly and offers solutions.
- Don’t stop marketing. Change call to actions to contact your campground and update links to your campground Facebook page.
“We understand this outage creates challenges. Know that our teams are committed to bringing KOA.com back online as soon as possible. Your patience is appreciated,” the statement ends.
An update was provided this morning in the KOA Owners’ private Facebook group, Yellow Pride.
Thank you for your patience as we continue to work toward restoring full functionality of KOA.com In collaboration with the home office team, Tempest, our long-standing technology partner, is working to ensure we’ll be back online soon. Unfortunately, we do not have an updated timeline.”
The updated statement in the Facebook group was made by Diane Eichler as well. KOA has been in communication with us and has assured us they are working quickly to provide a statement both internally and externally on the situation. We’ll provide any updates they share with us here.
KOA also communicated directly with the camping public in a recent email and advised them that phone numbers for all the campgrounds are still available on KOA.com and information as well as contact details are also available via their digital directory here:
http://koa.uberflip.com/i/937536-2022-koa-digital-directory/0?
Consumers can also call their Camper Experience Team at (888) 562-0000
This is breaking news and the article will be updated as soon as Modern Campground receives more information.
It’s wonderful that KOA.com is up and running smoothly again, making it easier for campers to book online. While they’ve been proactive during the outage, I wonder if there are plans to improve communication about potential future outages and minimize their impact.
Just wanted to share that KOA.com is down for a bit due to some server maintenance stuff. But hey, no worries! You can still reserve your camping spot by giving them a call or shooting them an email. They’ve got your back, making sure you can still plan your outdoor adventure smoothly.