Robert Upe, The Age, reports
TODAY, 23 million people will watch a Bollywood film in India and many of them will want to go to the places they have seen.
This is a daily scenario that has been noted by tourism officials who are actively supporting Bollywood movies and Indian television programs that are filmed here by providing funding and location advice and access.
''Bollywood has a huge influence on where Indians travel,'' said Carl Mah, an India tour specialist in Melbourne.
''Bollywood is bigger than Hollywood and people want to go to the places they see in the movies. The influence of the movies is massive.''
Earlier this month shooting started in Sydney on the latest Bollywood feature to be filmed in Australia, a romance called From Sydney … With Love. It is the first Bollywood movie to include the name of an Australian city in its title and is being filmed in locations across the city, including the Opera House, Darling Harbour and the Kings Cross fountain. There will be a rugby scene, choreographed by the movie's stunt director, and footage of buskers and graffiti art. It will be released in May.
''There will be 2 million posters and up to 10,000 billboards for it in India and producers estimate at least half a billion people will read the positive title with the word 'Sydney','' the Australian-based Bollywood entrepreneur Anupam Sharma said.
''A quarter of a billion people will watch the film counting its cinema screening, pay TV release and years on the DVD market. But if it turns out to be a super hit many more will see it. That's a conservative estimate. The figures are mind boggling because of the population of 1.2 billion people.''
Mr Sharma said several Bollywood movies and Indian TV programs are filmed in Australia each year and tourism authorities provide assistance to help get them off the ground and to ensure destination footage is included.
A Bollywood feature called Orange was filmed in Melbourne last year and directors and producers are scouting locations to make another movie and to shoot a TV series that is already established in India, Mr Sharma said.
The managing director of Tourism Australia, Andrew McEvoy, is not making a song and dance of the Bollywood phenomena, saying there are a number of box office flops. But he said: ''India's tourism potential is enormous … it shouldn't be seen as a big surprise that more and more tourism bodies are turning to Bollywood films as part of their marketing approach.
''Like China, there is a burgeoning middle class in India that wants to travel. There will be 50 million outbound travellers from India by 2020 and we want to tap into that emerging market.''
Tourism Australia is supporting the filming in Sydney of an Indian television program called Bade Achhe Lagte Hain.
It has contributed $350,000 towards the soapie for 66 minutes of destination footage across eight 30-minute episodes that will be seen by 25 million Indians. The footage will show Bondi Beach, the SCG, the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge among other landmarks.
Mr McEvoy acknowledged that Australia's reputation as a welcoming destination nosedived after several attacks on Indian students in 2009.
''We haven't overcome that completely,'' he said. ''Our reputation as a welcoming destination prior to that was a lot stronger.''
India's cricket team will play here this season and Tourism Australia is also looking at how it can capitalise on that visit.
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