Today, on Wednesday, 22 August 2018, Monja Büdke, member of the board of management, welcomed four very special visitors to the Mercedes-Benz Museum: Melissa Khan, Faraaz Munshi and Wagar Sahid from Guyana and Cecil Rawlins from the Federation of St Kitts and Nevis represented the two final countries that had been missing from the museum’s statistics. “ Their visit completes our map of museum visitors from all 193 member states of the United Nations”, stated a delighted Ms Büdke.
The guests from Guyana and the Federation of St. Kitts and Nevis are STIHL dealers from the Caribbean and South America. The prestigious chainsaw and motorised equipment manufacturer STIHL is represented in 160 nations and regularly organizes visits for about 40 dealership groups annually to the headquarters in Waiblingen and to the production locations in Austria and Switzerland. The Mercedes-Benz Museum is regularly part of the accompanying visiting programme.
Since February 2017 the Mercedes-Benz Museum had been running a campaign specifically aimed at visitors from the seven countries which were not yet represented in the official visitor statistics: Benin, Botswana, Guyana, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, St Kitts and Nevis as well as Suriname. The campaign proved very successful. Visitors from five of the countries came to see the Mercedes-Benz Museum in 2017.
On 22 August 2018 the STIHL visitors from Guyana and from St Kitts and Nevis filled in the final blanks. The museum flew the two countries’ flags to mark their visit. After being welcomed by Ms Büdke, the visitors explored the museum and were then invited for a snack in the museum restaurant.
The Mercedes-Benz Museum uses regular surveys to collect information about where its visitors come from. Since the museum re-opened in 2006, the proportion of international visitors has continued to rise steadily. Last year, figures reached a height: 60 percent of the visitors coming from other countries. After Germany, China was once again the next top country of origin with more than ten percent, followed by the US, France and Switzerland.
