‘Alarmist’ weather reports are being blamed for keeping would-be British holidaymakers out of the nation’s caravan parks. The caravan industry there is slamming the BBC for driving tourists away from seaside resorts with forecasts of floods and storms that never eventuate.
Queenslanders will need no reminding that perception is just as important as reality when it comes to tourism.
Grey nomads and others stayed away from the Sunshine state in their droves following huge floods there a couple of years ago. Bad as it was, in reality, the devastation to infrastructure was nowhere near as widespread or as long lasting as most people believed.
In Britain, weathermen are being asked not to tarnish the whole country with a ‘single wet-weather symbol’ and to be ‘more careful with their phrasing’.
Claire Jeavons, who runs the Beverley Park holiday site in Paignton, Devon, said ‘alarmist’ forecasts, which often proved groundless, were having a major impact on bookings across the West Country. “It is already causing holidaymakers to stay away,” she told the Daily Mail. “Just a few days ago we were hearing that all caravan parks in the West Country were on flood alert and this simply wasn’t the case.”
Tony Clish, a director of Park Holidays UK, was just as outraged. “Last week we were told that all caravan parks in southern England were on flood alert,” he said. “Some parks in Wales did flood recently, but that’s no reason to suggest that caravans in Suffolk would soon be bobbing around in parks which have never flooded before.”
He said that coastal holiday parks in Suffolk often stayed dry when it was raining inland, yet forecasters frequently tarnished the whole county with a single wet-weather symbol. BBC weather presenter Tomasz Schafernaker told the Daily Mail there was no reason why forecasters would want to ‘dampen the spirits or be deliberately pessimistic’.
“’I understand the frustration and there is a tendency for weather forecasters to emphasise on the negative aspects of the weather,” he said. “It’s just that our job is to pick out the most important parts of the weather which can affect people’s lives … if indeed there’s going to be a shower somewhere we need to flag up that possibility.”
The British weather forecaster is famously unreliable. In 1987, weatherman Michael Fish denied a hurricane was about to hit just hours before the ‘Great Storm’ caused massive devastation across the country.
