Büdke (right) welcoming the visitors from Guyana and from St Kitts and Nevis on Aug 22.
STUTTGART: Target: get citizens of all 193 member states of the United Nations to visit the Mercedes-Benz Museum here.
Aug 22 was a special day for Mercedes-Benz when it achieved its goal with four foreign visitors to the museum.
They were Melissa Khan, Faraaz Munshi and Wagar Sahid from Guyana and Cecil Rawlins from the Federation of St Kitts and Nevis, who represented the two final countries that had been missing from the museum’s statistics.
The guests from Guyana and the Federation of St Kitts and Nevis are STIHL dealers from the Caribbean and South America. The chainsaw and motorised equipment maker STIHL is represented in 160 nations and regularly organises 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 visiting programme.
Since February 2017 the Mercedes-Benz Museum had been running a campaign 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 successful. Visitors from five of the countries came to see the Mercedes-Benz Museum in 2017.
On Aug 22, 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 the museum's management board member, Monja 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% of the visitors coming from other countries. After Germany, China was once again the next top country of origin with more than 10%, followed by the US, France and Switzerland.
The Mercedes-Benz Museum is open daily from Tuesday to Sunday (9am to 6pm).
