Band 9: The chart below shows the numbers of three types of visitors to a museum between 1997 and 2012. Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant.

The bar graph illustrates how many visitors in three distinct categories came to a museum from 1997 to 2012.

Overall, there were rises in the numbers of adult visitors, special exhibition visitors, and in total, while a decrease was seen in the figure for those aged under 15. Additionally, the adult group consistently had the highest figure throughout the period.

Looking first at groups with rising statistics, the number of adults visiting the museum started at 300,100 individuals and leveled at this level over the next 5 years, with a significant rise to a peak of 400,500 in 2007. This figure, however, dropped to 380,000 in the last year of the period. A more steady increase was observed in the attendance figure for special exhibition visitors; 28,000 tourists spent time in the museum at the start of the period, and 42,000 people at the end, which almost doubled the starting data. It is important to note that this category constantly accounted for the smallest numbers among the three types of travelers.

Turning next to the last group, there were 120,000 aged-under-15 attendances that paid a visit to the museum in 1997. Thereafter, the number of young individuals fell steadily to only 82,300 people in 2012.