Thursday, December 27, 2012

RV park chairman Jim Rogers of KOA to appear on TV's Undercover Boss.

Jim Rogers, CEO of Kampgrounds of America Inc., will assume the persona of Tim Bickford, an out-of-work accountant from San Francisco on the CBS TV series “Undercover Boss,” Friday, Jan. 11 (8-9 p.m., ET/PT).

Rogers said he welcomed the chance to go undercover, taking on the persona of a “front line” KOA employee. “’Undercover Boss’ is great entertainment, but it also does a great service by taking the general public behind the scenes of popular companies,” Rogers said. “Every episode is a case study in business management.
 
“My front line assignments on ‘Undercover Boss’ affirmed the importance of creating KOA systems that maximize the time that campground staff members can spend with guests,” Rogers said in a news release. “I learned that the great people we have on the front lines can always use more time to better know and serve our campers. Genuine engagement, ultimately, is what it’s all about. KOA campground owners and their staffs are the real heroes of KOA.”

Rogers has been at the helm of KOA for 12 years. The company has 489 locations in the U.S. and Canada.
 
Each week, "Undercover Boss" follows a different executive as he or she goes an undercover mission to examine the inner workings of their companies. While working alongside their employees, they see the effects their decisions have on others, where the problems lie within their organizations and get an up-close look at both the good and the bad while discovering and rewarding the unsung heroes who make their companies run.
 
SOURCE: Kampgrounds of America, Inc, and RVtravel.com.

2 comments:

Ellen said...

We haven't had many bad campground/RV park experiences since we started full-time RVing in spring 2009, but one happened to be at the KOA in Salt Lake City, UT. Noisy cars through the park at all hours (a local later told us this particular KOA is a known spot for drug dealings and other illegal activities), people letting their dogs do their business in the TENT sites (we were very glad we had an RV and weren't sleeping on the ground) and a staff that seemed unable to cope with it all.

So watching Jim Rogers RV (in a rental! Doesn't he own an RV?!?!??) from Billings MT to AZ and CA without stopping at the KOA in SLC made me even more cynical about this TV show than I was before this episode: let's always let the boss look like a clueless dork or a Scrooge who suddenly sees the light.

Would have liked to have seen him deal with real issues, like those at the SLC KOA, rather than focus on his "Founders Award" locations.

Easy and sleazy, if you ask me. Not impressed by KOA nor its CEO, as you can tell.

john said...

I will tell you not all KOA are like what he saw on the TV show. In the midwest they are rude.
I had to use KOA last year.
Last year my wife and I jointed KOA because our son inlaw is in the army. The only campground close to them was a KOA. KOA do not treat campimg as a familly. They think all familly have only 2 people in it. We travel as a familly of 4 and have to pay extra for the extra people.
That is why I try hard to use KOA.
John