Tourist attractions meet Met Office over weather app icons causing cancellations
Tourist attractions have met with the Met Office to discuss how weather app icons are leading to last-minute cancellations, potentially due to misleading or overly cautious forecasts.
The Full Story
A plain summary built from the channels that reported this story.
Tourist attractions including Chester Zoo, Go Ape, The Eden Project and Blackpool Pleasure Beach have held talks with the Met Office and government officials over the way weather forecasts are presented on mobile phone apps. The attractions argue that a single weather icon representing an entire day is too simplistic and often leads to last-minute cancellations, costing businesses tens of thousands of pounds a day.
The meeting, described as a summit, was aimed at improving how weather apps can better serve people planning days out. According to the Met Office, around 80% of people use weather forecasts to plan their daily lives, and an increasing number rely on mobile apps. Some apps offer longer-range forecasts, while many provide hour-by-hour breakdowns. The concern is that a single symbol for the whole day can be misleading.
Dan Whitworth, reporting for the BBC, noted that visitors at Chester Zoo said they tend to use common sense and scroll through the day's forecast rather than rely on a single icon. The Met Office said the summit was an excellent opportunity to better understand the challenges faced by outdoor attractions and acknowledged that the use of a single icon to represent the day's weather is an industry-wide challenge.
No immediate changes are expected from the summit, but tourist bosses said they hope it marks the start of a conversation that leads to real change.
On screen
Stills are sampled automatically at 60-second intervals. Where shown, the still is the nearest available frame from the relevant broadcast segment and is included to show what was on screen during that part of the broadcast. A still may not correspond to the exact second of a quoted phrase.
Key Claims
Claims reported during this story's coverage, mapped by channel. Ordered by how many channels carried each claim.
| Claim | BBC One |
|---|---|
| Tourist attractions reported that weather app icons cause cancellations, costing businesses tens of thousands of pounds a day, and noted that around 80% of people use forecasts via apps. |
Channel Perspectives
What each channel focused on, with key quotes.
The report focused on the meeting itself, highlighting the specific attractions involved and the economic impact of cancellations. It gave voice to the attractions' concerns about simplistic icons and included a visitor's perspective. The tone was neutral and informative, framing the summit as a constructive first step rather than a crisis.
- “They argue that a single icon like that is too simple and can often mean that people change plans at the last minute, costing their businesses tens of thousands of pounds a day.”
- “That is really impactful in terms of their reason to visit, their decision to do something like come to Chester Zoo and it's having a big impact on our income.”
- “The Met Office said today's summit was an excellent opportunity to better understand the challenges faced by outdoor attractions and the use of a single icon to represent today's weather was an industry-wide challenge.”
Broadcast Timeline
News broadcasts tracked for this story, in time order.