What do Salman Khan and Farhan Akhtar have in common? Poland!
While Salman’s latest flick Kick to be released this year will be shot in beautiful Polish locales, Farhan’s production house Excel Entertainment, a Mumbai-based film studio created by Farhan Akhtar and Ritesh Sidhwani, is also eyeing the Central European country.
This, Poland feels, will attract Indian travellers . Poland, which gets about 14 million international tourist arrivals annually, is looking at road shows, online campaigns, and tie-ups with Indian film producers to promote itself.
Emilia Kubik, Project Leader, Polish Tourist Organisation, said:“Last week, we had a road show for the film industry. Apart from consumers and tour operators, Bollywood is also our target group. We have brought with us the top Polish film companies, studios, production houses as well.”
Farhan-starrer Bhaag Milkha Bhaag had used a Polish studio for post production of the film. Kubik added, “We believe this is a very good platform since the Indian film industry understands that we are competitive in production and post-production. We now want to move to the next level of feature films production.” Interestingly, last year, over 40 Indian ad films such as Yardley deodorant, Delishus biscuits, among others, were shot in Poland.
Road showThe organisation, in association with the Poland Convention Bureau, conducted a three-city road show covering Mumbai, Bangalore, and New Delhi. The road show, which is part of PTO’s product marketing and branding campaign, ‘Polska - Come And Find Your Story’, was targeted towards promoting business and leisure tourism.
The country has high hopes from the Asian region. “Our biggest markets are neighbouring countries from Europe and the US; but Indian travellers are seeking newer destinations and we can cater perfectly to this market. By 2015, we want to increase the number of tourist arrivals from Asia by 100,000.”
According to the Main Statistical Office of Poland, 14,238 Indians visited Poland in 2013 compared to 13,581 in 2012 and 11,356 in 2011.