The new Internet platform ViMuseo.com presents itself throughout Europe with more than 20,000 museums from 44 European countries and almost 30,000 museums from the USA. Finally, the more than two billion visitors worldwide who visit a museum or an exhibition every year can find all the information they need on a central website.
For many people, visiting museums is part of their activities when they are on a city trip or on vacation. While some cities and regions present their museums well presented on the Internet, it is difficult for most places and countries to get reliable information about museums.
“It is our goal to really gather all museums and exhibitions in the world on ViMuseo and to give every museum the opportunity to present itself worldwide with all its information and pictures,” says Michael Sametinger, founder and managing director of Museumsfreund GmbH, that runs ViMuseo.
Users have long become accustomed to receiving matching search hits quickly on the Internet: You want to enter your location or the location where you will be, usually still indicate your interests – and already the website or app should have filtered out what interests you. However, this approach has not been possible so far. ViMuseo.com offers this search option for the first time, just like other websites do.
“You enter your location, choose that you are interested in art, technology or nature, and enter the maximum distance you want to walk or drive,” Michael Sametinger explains the ViMuseo.com home page. “The platform then lists, for example, all museums that have art as their main focus, shows how far away they are from the user and where they are located, and with a further click you get all the information up to the museum gallery where the museum can present its exhibits.
As a further plus of ViMuseo.com, which also distinguishes it from previous museum websites, visitors and users have the possibility to exchange information about the museums, to rate them and to mark their favourites in a watch list. The latter is particularly useful if you want to plan a visit to a city or holiday in advance and find out which museums exist there.
Behind the team, which consists of museum and art experts, designers and programmers, lies a work of almost three years in which all European museums had to be located. Because in many European countries there is no central office that can give an overview of the country’s museums. The staff therefore had to research every museum for ViMuseo.com.
“We have received great feedback for the idea behind ViMuseo from all countries in Europe with whose tourism, museum associations or ministries of culture we have spoken,” Michael Sametinger is pleased to say, “and we are confident that we will be able to gather all 100,000 museums in the world on ViMuseo.com by the end of 2019.
More at: www.vimuseo.com.
