ABBA Museum: “Like climbing into a movie”
The ABBA museum appears to be a genuine tourist draw for next summer when it opens. The interest from the international media is enormous and thousands of tickets have already been sold.
Visitors from 32 countries have already bought tickets for the ABBA museum, which opens on June 4, 2009.
The news that the museum be built was released in November 2006. The media from every continent has drawn attention to the ABBA museum.
Most interested are the media in Germany, England and the United States. The very first magazine article about the museum, however, appeared in China’s Shanghai News.
A photo I took on my last Stockholm visit – ABBA Museum site Oct. 2007
2008 looks set to become yet another record year for Stockholm as a tourist city. Tourism grew up to May this year by 14%. Next year will bring another attraction highlight to the city : The ABBA Museum.
The ABBA museum will become a magnet
When we’re talking about Stockholm, we always mention the ABBA Museum. It does not matter if the person we’re talking to is 23 or 44, everyone says "wow," says Peter Lindqvist, CEO of Stockholm Visitors Board, a marketing company owned by the City of Stockholm.
The museum’s founders Ewa Wigenheim-Westman and Ulf Westman says that 3 000 tickets have already been sold.
In addition, media coverage has been impressive – 2,300 articles have been written about the museum in newspapers around the world.
"It has had a tremendous impact and gives us a shot in the arm. We understood that the interest would be great, but that it would be this big, we could not believe," says Ewa Wigenheim-Westman.
She and Ulf Westman expect to receive approximately 500,000 visitors a year, of which 70-75 per cent will be foreign visitors.
What will attract tourists to the museum is the possibility of themselves being involved and to sing and dance to ABBA’s music. Ewa Wigenheim-Westman stresses that it is an interactive museum, although it will also display many pieces of ABBA memorabilia in the form of the group’s gold records, a large amount of costumes, ABBA’s scrapbook items and more.
"Visitors will be able to experience ABBA’s world with all the senses. It will be like climbing into a movie," says Ewa Wigenheim-Westman.
We are currently renovating the old Customs House on Södermalm’s north-east shore, near Slussen, which will house the museum. The building is owned by the Ports of Stockholm, which also pays for the renovation. The museum will be constructed inside the building in the new year and is estimated to cost 50 million Swedish kronor. Citizens and an unnamed investor along with Ulf Westman are behind the venture.
You can find a link to the ABBA museum via the icethesite Links page.