MADRID: Spain is coaxing Indian moviemakers to use its colorful fiestas and historic monuments as settings for their films, in a move to grab a bigger share of India’s fast-growing overseas tourism market.
As part of its bid to lure visitors from the world’s second most populous country, Madrid will host next weekend the annual International Indian Film Academy awards, dubbed the “Bollywood Oscars.”
In global tourism, Spain ranks as the third most visited country, but it now wants to diversify its tourism base beyond the traditional northern European sunseekers that account for the bulk of its visitors.
Among the Bollywood stars who will attend the awards ceremony in Spain will be hunky Indian actor Hrithik Roshan, the green-eyed star of the 2011 coming-of-age movie “Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara,” which was produced in close collaboration with the Spanish tourism promotion agency, Turespana.
The film about three friends on a pre-marriage road trip across Spain includes scenes at “La Tomatina” festival in the town of Bunol, as well as at Pamplona’s San Fermin bull running festival.
With scenes also set in Barcelona, Seville and the beaches of the Costa Brava, the movie was the first major Indian production to shoot extensively in various locations in Spain.
It was also the highest grossing Bollywood film of 2011.
“There was an immediate impact in the number of people requesting entry visas to travel to Spain,” the director of the London office of Turespana, Enrique Ruiz de Lera, who led the agency’s talks with the producers of the movie, told AFP.
The year after its release, 60,444 Indians visited Spain, nearly double the 2011 figure, according to the industry and tourism ministry. Last year 85,000 Indians visited Spain.
Actor Anil Kapoor, 59, best known internationally for his role in the 2008 film “Slumdog Millionaire,” said during a visit to Madrid in March to promote the Bollywood Oscars that he is “looking forward to coming back again and again to Spain.”
Turespana plans to create an ad campaign to appeal to this rising tide of tourists using images of Bollywood celebrities enjoying themselves in Madrid at the awards show.
The ceremony itself is expected to bring 15,000 visitors to the Spanish capital during the week of the show.
“We are counting that the arrival of several thousand Indian friends for the (awards) ceremony will help bring millions of their compatriots in the coming years,” Spain’s secretary of state for foreign affairs, Ignacio Ybanez, said earlier this year.
As part of its bid to lure visitors from the world’s second most populous country, Madrid will host next weekend the annual International Indian Film Academy awards, dubbed the “Bollywood Oscars.”
In global tourism, Spain ranks as the third most visited country, but it now wants to diversify its tourism base beyond the traditional northern European sunseekers that account for the bulk of its visitors.
Among the Bollywood stars who will attend the awards ceremony in Spain will be hunky Indian actor Hrithik Roshan, the green-eyed star of the 2011 coming-of-age movie “Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara,” which was produced in close collaboration with the Spanish tourism promotion agency, Turespana.
The film about three friends on a pre-marriage road trip across Spain includes scenes at “La Tomatina” festival in the town of Bunol, as well as at Pamplona’s San Fermin bull running festival.
With scenes also set in Barcelona, Seville and the beaches of the Costa Brava, the movie was the first major Indian production to shoot extensively in various locations in Spain.
It was also the highest grossing Bollywood film of 2011.
“There was an immediate impact in the number of people requesting entry visas to travel to Spain,” the director of the London office of Turespana, Enrique Ruiz de Lera, who led the agency’s talks with the producers of the movie, told AFP.
The year after its release, 60,444 Indians visited Spain, nearly double the 2011 figure, according to the industry and tourism ministry. Last year 85,000 Indians visited Spain.
Actor Anil Kapoor, 59, best known internationally for his role in the 2008 film “Slumdog Millionaire,” said during a visit to Madrid in March to promote the Bollywood Oscars that he is “looking forward to coming back again and again to Spain.”
Turespana plans to create an ad campaign to appeal to this rising tide of tourists using images of Bollywood celebrities enjoying themselves in Madrid at the awards show.
The ceremony itself is expected to bring 15,000 visitors to the Spanish capital during the week of the show.
“We are counting that the arrival of several thousand Indian friends for the (awards) ceremony will help bring millions of their compatriots in the coming years,” Spain’s secretary of state for foreign affairs, Ignacio Ybanez, said earlier this year.
