From £137,000-a-Day Losses to a National Summit: Chester Zoo’s Weather App Campaign
- Steven Hesketh
- 1 day ago
- 4 min read
This might feel like slightly old news now, but I don’t think the conversation has gone away. In fact, since Chester Zoo first raised the issue back in March, it has gathered considerably more momentum.
And having operated outdoor events ourselves, I completely understand why.
In March 2026, Chester Zoo led a campaign calling for changes to the way weather forecasts are displayed on apps. Importantly, they weren’t questioning the accuracy of the forecast itself. Their argument was about how that information is presented to the public.
A single raincloud can represent an entire 24-hour period, even if the actual rain is expected for a relatively short part of the day or overnight.
That matters because people make decisions quickly.
Research highlighted by Chester Zoo suggested around 70% of people check the weather before heading out, while visitor attractions reported attendance falling by around 30% following an unfavourable forecast. Chester Zoo estimated that misleading weather displays could cost some attractions as much as £137,000 in a single day.
More than 80 outdoor attractions initially backed the campaign, including the Eden Project, RHS Gardens, Blackpool Pleasure Beach and Blenheim Palace.
We Know Exactly What They Mean
We experienced the same anxiety operating the Cheshire & North Wales Food & Drink Festival.
When you are responsible for an outdoor event, you become obsessed with the forecast.
You look at it days beforehand. Then again a few hours later. You check another app.
Someone sends you a screenshot from another forecast. Suddenly one is telling you there are strong winds, another says rain and another looks completely different again.
And when you see something like strong winds forecast for Saturday, your immediate reaction is obviously concern.
But then you look more closely and perhaps those winds are only expected early in the morning.
By lunchtime, conditions could be completely different.
The problem is that the customer might never get that far.
They open their phone, see a wind symbol or raincloud next to Saturday and think: I’m not going.
We see exactly the same thing with Deva Fest.
When you are running a large outdoor festival, weather becomes one of the biggest things people talk about in the build-up. People are checking forecasts days in advance and making decisions about whether they will come, what day they will attend or whether they will buy a ticket at all.
And again, sometimes the perception of the weather can do the damage before the weather itself ever has the chance to.
For an event operator, that is incredibly frustrating because the decision has potentially been made before the day has even arrived.
By then, we have already committed to infrastructure, entertainment, traders, staffing, security, suppliers and marketing. Those costs don’t disappear because somebody saw a raincloud on their phone five days beforehand.
It is one of the strange realities of outdoor hospitality and events.
Sometimes you aren’t fighting the weather itself; you’re fighting the perception of what the weather might be.
The Evidence Has Become Even Stronger
What makes Chester Zoo’s argument particularly interesting is what has happened since that original campaign.
By July, new research carried out by Chester Zoo and tourism consultancy Navigate found that more than 60% of surveyed visitor attractions experienced visitor reductions of over 40% following a poorly displayed weather forecast, with some reporting falls of more than 50%.
Support also spread beyond traditional visitor attractions, with organisations representing events and markets backing the campaign too.
Then, on 13 July 2026, Chester Zoo hosted a national summit bringing together around 30 delegates, including senior Met Office representatives, government officials and leaders from major UK attractions.
So what began with businesses saying this is hurting us has now turned into a proper conversation about what could be changed.
What Could Actually Change?
Some of the ideas being discussed are incredibly simple.
One suggestion is to split the day into shorter periods rather than using one symbol to represent the whole 24 hours.
There is a very different customer reaction between seeing:
🌧️ Saturday
and seeing:
Rain early morning. Dry from 11am.
The forecast hasn’t changed.
The information hasn’t been hidden.
But suddenly you have enough context to make a proper decision.
Following the summit, the Met Office acknowledged that a single weather icon rarely tells the full story and agreed to continue working with tourism representatives, government and weather providers on how forecasts are communicated.
That is progress.
Nobody working in outdoor events is asking for bad weather to be hidden.
If there are dangerous winds, heavy rain or conditions that make an event unsafe, operators need that information more than anyone.
But there has to be a difference between warning people accurately and making an entire day look like a write-off because of one symbol.
We have seen first-hand through both the Cheshire & North Wales Food & Drink Festival and Deva Fest how closely customer confidence is tied to the forecast.
Hospitality, tourism and events are already fighting for every visit.
We can’t control the British weather.
But we can get better at explaining what it is actually going to do.
Because sometimes the weather isn’t the thing damaging a business.
Sometimes it’s the forecast.
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