Travelmartindia.com Goes The Bollywood Way

Targets 12,000 Visitors In The First Year

Charmaine Fernz - Mumbai

Manoj Gursahani

Bollywood has been the innovative Indian tourism mantra for a number of international tourism boards and keeping in sync with this emerging trend, travelmartindia.com, a leading travel portal has tied up with Popcorn Entertainment Ltd, to promote this concept in totality. Elucidating on the tie-up, Manoj Gursahani, MD, Travelmartindia.com said, "Having interacted with a lot of NRI friends, there was a huge demand for bollywood and how this industry works. Taking this fact into consideration as well as our travel background, we decided to add another attraction to Mumbai's list - Bollywood. This concept is a big craze internationally and having researched the same, we went into a joint partnership to promote Bollywood Tourism."

Getting down to the bare necessities, Gursahani explained what went into the conceptualisation and the packaging. "To provide our customers with a natural environment, we took a studio on rent in Filmistan, which is around 4,000 square feet and put up an actual film set. This is a three-hour show wherein our guests are shown the actual production of an Hindi movie with a lot of other stuff, which is priced at US $100. Apart from the movie, visitors are taken to a mock room wherein costumes of renowned actors and actresses are put on display, which is followed by lunch in studio style (the actual way a celebrity eats on the sets). There is also a post-production tour. However, nowhere in our package do we assure our guests a star visit," said Gursahani.

On a futuristic note, Gursahani added, " We are looking at introducing celebrity dinners, wherein we get renowned celebrities to dine with our groups. We had officially launched our company and this innovative concept at WTM 2004. Even the minister of tourism, Renuka Chowdhury has assured us full support wherein most Indiatourism offices internationally would be promoting this concept. We would also be working closely with the travel trade and hoteliers to provide further impetus and would offer 10 per cent commission to our trade partners."

Talking on the potential, Gursahani said, "There is enough demand and market for Bollywood Tourism. What we offer our customers is quality with no compromises. We would be using the online medium aggressively as a marketing tool. However, initially our focus will be the NRI community. Our economical packages are US$ 175 for a couple and a US$ 300 for a family of four ie two adults and two kids below ten years of age. With a huge investment into the project, our target for the first year would be 12,000 visitors while our second year target is around 30,000 visitors."