NY, London, Barcelona, Abu Dhabi in race for next IIFA event

New York, London, Barcelona, and Abu Dhabi are some of the cities that are being considered to host next year's International Indian Film Academy (IIFA) awards ceremony.
"Where the IIFA will happen in 2015 is to be confirmed in the next few months. But some of the contending destinations are Barcelona, New York, London and Abu Dhabi," Andre Timmins, Director, IIFA and Wizcraft, told PTI in an exclusive interview.
Apparently, for the last three years the IIFA team had been considering the American cities like Las Vegas, Chicago and New York and finally the awards ceremony finally made its maiden trip to the US with the 2014 edition held at the Tampa Bay in Florida.

In the last 14 years, IIFA has travelled to continents like Africa, Europe, Asia and North America.
Andre feels the IIFA awards this year was a huge success throughout the weekend. "We added two new events with IIFA Stomp and IIFA Expo, both of which received astounding reception from the local people and visitors. The business forum received excellent interest from Indian and US delegates," Andre said.
The IIFA Rocks event this year gave the local people of Tampa Bay an opportunity to share the stage with the Indian stars. "IIFA Awards had over 23,000 people gather in the live audience to witness the show," Andre said.

Andre feels the beauty of IIFA is that it creates many positive and memorable moments.

"This year it was about Hollywood meets Bollywood at the platform of IIFA with Kevin Spacey and John Travolta attending the awards. The masterclass between Kevin Spacey and Priyanka Chopra... The moment on stage with Hrithik Roshan presenting an honour to John Travolta, Kevin Spacey doing the iconic lungi dance on stage. A great turnout of Bollywood stars in attendance for the weekend," he said.
"The only learning that we would have from this year would be timing and trying to avoid late running of the events," he added.

The IIFA awards aim to cash in on the fan base that Indian cinema has abroad.