The Mercedes-Benz Museum recorded a total of 772,750 visitors in 2015. Compared with 711,330 guests in 2014, this means the museum markedly increased its visitor tally by 8.6 percent or 61,420 people in 2015. The number of international guests from more than 170 nations increased by 43 percent. The largest faction came from China (9 percent and thus again an increase over the previous year and a fourfold increase over 2009). Behind Germany and China, most of the museum guests came from the USA, France, Switzerland, Italy, Russia, Spain, India, Poland and Japan. The percentage of international visitors in 2015 was largest in July – more than 55 percent of visitors travelled from abroad during this summer month.
The international character is also reflected in the available guided tours, which due to demand are currently offered in eleven different languages. The thousands of tours guided by knowledgeable experts also included guided tours for prominent figures. Borut Pahor, President of Slovenia, visited the Mercedes-Benz Museum in June 2015 together with Baden-Württemberg Minister of Finance and Economics Nils Schmid and enjoyed the exhibition on a guided tour in his native language. The growth of museum fans in the social media mirrored the development of the on-site visits: For the first time, the museum has more than 400,000 followers on Facebook and more than 100,000 on Instagram @mercedesbenzclassic. The online video series “Museum Monday” also plays a role in the success. It received the German Award for Online Communication in 2015 and won Silver at the Annual Multimedia Awards 2016. An achievement that inspires: The museum series will be continued with ten new episodes starting on 25 January.
Last year, 22 percent of the guests returned to the museum for a repeat visit. They were enthralled by new exhibits added to the permanent exhibition and by the special exhibitions. After the great exhibition on the C 111, the museum opened the Mercedes-Benz Safety Cars exhibition in December 2015, which will be on display until April 2016. Apart from the special presentations (15 in all), the many events in particular attracted visitors – for example, the Bonhams classic car auction and the open-air cinema, which set a new visitor record of some 10,000 spectators. Many of the concerts of international artists at the jazzopen stuttgart music festival (Bob Geldof et al.) also sold out quickly. Other events included the participation in the International Animation Festival Stuttgart, the all-brand Cars & Coffee classic car meet and the Mercedes-Benz Nights of the Stars, which for the first time saw a chef with two-star rating (Tanja Gradits) and a chef awarded three stars by the Guide Michelin (Juan Amador) indulge the guests with culinary creations of the highest order.
Without a doubt the most emotional highlight was the big stem cell classification campaign at the Mercedes-Benz Museum: the goal was to find a stem cell donor for a woman from Stuttgart suffering from leukaemia and the response was huge: 3401 people showed up on 22 March 2015 to register as potential donors. The museum counted an especially large number of young visitors last year: more than 113,000 children and youths visited, most of them as part of student field trips. The 1544 classes also included a great many students from abroad who attended as part of exchange programmes. In cooperation with the Landesmuseum Württemberg, a summer holiday programme was organised for the first time in 2015 under the motto “Mobility yesterday, today and tomorrow – hit the road”. More than 15,000 children and youths participated in the ‘Fascination Design’ hands-on exhibition. The Mercedes-Benz Museum is also a popular venue for children’s birthday parties and offers such varied activities as a museum rally and engine bolting.
