Venue 'losing 200 visitors' through weather apps

The director of a monkey forest says that the venue gets 200 fewer visitors some days because of how weather forecasts are displayed on apps.

Trentham Monkey Forest in Stoke-on-Trent was among the tourist attractions which signed an open letter calling on the Met Office to change the way forecasts are presented.

They claimed using a single rain icon summarising a 24-hour period of weather wrongly gave the impression of a washout for the entire day, which would deter people from visiting.

The Met Office said it knew how important forecasts were in making plans and it had "already delivered a series of improvements".

Matt Lovatt, park director at Trentham Monkey Forest, said: "Like a lot of outdoor attractions, we're so weather-dependent and the forecasts don't just to help to tell us what day we're likely to have, but we know it really impacts visitors.

"Sometimes, displaying one icon to represent an entire day isn't always representative."

He said staff at the venue were "quite diligent" in keeping track of the weather hour by hour and most other people would probably not bother doing that.

"So having the one icon is sometimes not really fully descriptive of what weather we can expect for the day," he added.

On days when weather apps were showing a cloudy or rainy icon as opposed to a sunny symbol, Lovatt said this could lead to 200 fewer visitors.

The biggest differences were on Bank Holidays or weekends, he added, which is when the venue was "traditionally nice and busy".

"When that weather icon is saying we might have some showers, then we see a bit of a drop-off. Ultimately, we'll lose a couple of hundred visitors," Lovatt said.

"The shame is that sometimes we'll get rain at 17:00 or 18:00, which will have no impact on the day [for us]."

The open letter signed by the group of dozens of tourist attractions, led by Chester Zoo, claimed the issue was costing some venues up to £137,000 a day.

In response, a Met Office spokesperson said: "We know the weather forecast is an important part of making plans, which is why [we have] already delivered a series of improvements to enhance the presentation of weather information which can support the visitor economy."

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