One of the UK’s largest and most visited attractions, Chester Zoo, is leading a nationwide push to change how weather forecasts are displayed on popular apps, warning that misleading rain icons could be costing some venues up to £137,000 in a single day.

Navigate has worked alongside the Chester Zoo team to call for a roundtable with the Met Office, government and major weather app developers to explore practical improvements, including separate daytime and overnight weather icons and clearer written summaries.

The letter in full

Dear Professor Endersby,

We are writing on behalf of some of the UK’s leading outdoor visitor attractions to seek your support in tackling a growing challenge for the visitor economy.

Tourism contributes around £147 billion a year to the UK, with domestic day visits accounting for over £50 billion of that total. Much of this is driven by spontaneous decisions, and for many families, those decisions hinge on one thing: a glance at a weather app.

Research shows that around 70% of people check the forecast before making plans, meaning expectations about weather influence behaviour almost as much as the cost of a day out. Yet visitors are often deterred not by actual conditions, but by how forecasts are presented.

Many apps summarise an entire 24-hour period with a single icon, so brief overnight rain can dominate the forecast and create the impression of a wet day. While more detailed data does exist, most users glance at the top-line symbol and plan their day accordingly.

This means that a single raincloud icon can cost thousands of pounds in lost revenue – some predictions as high as £137,000 a day. Seasonal and outdoor venues are hit hardest, with some reporting attendance dropping as much as 30% after a negative forecast, even when opening hours remain dry.

We greatly value the Met Office’s expertise and appreciate that your forecasts serve a wide range of audiences. We are not questioning the long-established science behind your work; rather we would welcome the opportunity to better understand the methodology behind how data is presented – and explore whether things could be done differently, particularly via third-party apps.

To this end, we propose a roundtable discussion bringing together the Met Office, leading UK visitor attractions, the relevant Minister, and key app developers to explore an effective answer to this problem - and discuss how your influence could help shape improvements across third-party platforms. Possible solutions could include splitting icons into day and night conditions; adding concise summaries like “showers early, brighter later;” or introducing simple indicators, such as a percentage bar showing expected dry hours.

Our shared goal is to ensure families have clear, useful information that supports informed decisions, without unintended consequences for the visitor economy.

With the rapid advances in app development and data visualisation, we are confident that practical solutions exist - and that, together, we can deliver clearer, more useful forecasts that benefit visitors, attractions, and the wider UK economy.

We hope you will join us in this conversation.

Yours sincerely,