Spain joins forces with Bollywood to boost tourism

Spain is coaxing Indian moviemakers to use its colourful 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, where half-naked revellers hurl mushy tomatoes at each other, 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.
Lonely Planet in 2013 launched a guide to Spain aimed specifically at the Indian market and travel agencies still advertise tours to the locations featured in the "Zindagi" movie.
India's ambassador to Spain, Vikram Misri, said the film "was singlehandedly responsible for making Spain a household name in India and increasing tourism from India".