Other alternative models were tested, but none produces a greater fit while

being as simple. Different factors were also considered, including the exchange
rate and the cost of fuel. Both of them show small but insufficiently meaningful
effect on the fitted model. Hence, we decided that these factors do not have a
very important part in predicting the number of visitors. The international airport
passenger volume was found to be affected by roughly the same factors as the
number of visitors to the tour, so it was not included in the model because it will
mask the effect of the other factors. In our model, we also explicitly ignored the
unusual sharp increase in the number of visitors in March 2014 using a more
sophisticated technique. Had it not been done, the fitted model would have
shown a higher number of visitors in March than in February in every year, even
though it has been shown that the number of visitors in February has been
consistently higher than in March (except in 2014). It was confirmed later that
this abnormal feature was due to a special event conducted at that time, so we
deem that ignoring this outlier is appropriate.