| Weather2Travel - a spin-off from shootingonlocation.com - worldwide pre-production research for film-makers (www.shootingonlocation.com), which helps film producers select the most suitable regions of the world for filming location sequences - has developed a climatic data feed that gives people who are planning a business trip, expedition or holiday a firm idea of what the weather may hold in far-flung locations. |
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| By browsing www.weather2travel.com before booking a trip, tourists can not only find the best places to travel in terms of weather but can also avoid turning up in the middle of the wet season, or when excessive heat could spoil their enjoyment - for example, in certain parts of Thailand in April or northern India in June. |
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| Weather2Travel's climate information details how much the sun shines around the world, presenting sunshine in total hours and also as a percentage of daylight hours. Heat and humidity are also shown, as are rainfall, sea temperature, maximum day and minimum night temperatures, as well as average monthly levels of UV radiation. The sun protection index is not commonly found on travel weather websites, despite being invaluable for travellers who want to assess the dangers of sunburn. |
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| Furthermore, a handy 'Holiday Planner' feature helps tourists find destinations that match their exact weather condition requirements in any month. For example, in a matter of seconds, users can find 20 destinations in 11 countries where the sea temperature is warm in February and there are usually eight hours of sunshine a day. Users can view the climate information as symbols or bar charts, which are easy to read and compare. |
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| Designed for the travel trade, Weather2Travel's data feed has huge potential for helping customers make informed decisions before they book an international trip. Ideal for online travel companies, portals and media, the feed can be incorporated directly into the client's website so the climatic data appears to be coming directly from them, under their own brand. The climate information can easily be combined with a travel company's existing flight information and travel times, while time zones can be added as an additional feature to be used in online searches. |
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| Jon Nigel, founder of Weather2Travel, comments: "Modern-day travellers are more demanding of specific information about holiday destinations than ever before. According to research by the University of Hamburg*, travellers rated information about the climate of their destination more highly, on average, than any of the other attributes they considered important." |
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| "However, travellers don't always make a distinction between 'weather' and 'climate'. The service we provide goes a lot further than meteorological sites in showing how a particular part of the world will be in terms of weather conditions at any given time of the year." |
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| The information provided by Weather2Travel is based on the most recent 30 years of global weather averages. Statistics for a sample of worldwide destinations (approximately 1,400) can be viewed at weather2travel.com, while the travel trade feeds are considerably more extensive and can be based on any list of resorts, towns or travel destinations. |
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| * http://www.uni-hamburg.de/Wiss/FB/15/Sustainability/climinfo.pdf |
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