The Indian film and television industry is heading towards new locales across the globe for shooting locations, with New Zealand, Singapore, Australia and some European countries offering lucrative packages to promote tourism in their locations.

According to industry sources, Indian films have played a key role in endorsing locations around Europe and Asia Pacific regions and have become the most viable marketing opportunities for the tourism industry.

Delegations from these countries are currently in Mumbai at 'Locations 2003', world's first film tourism promotion event, to interact with Indian producers and directors.

"Films that are shot abroad have a great reach, and act as a strong medium to promote tourism, said Tarun Hukku, director, Novel Event Works Company, promoters of Locations.

He added that New Zealand had benefited tremendously through a gigantic rise in tourists from India after the success of Kaho Na Pyar Hai, which was substantially shot in New Zealand.

A Singapore based portal, in association with the Singapore tourism board, is offering free travel, stay and production facilities to some big banners in India.

Sanjay Bhattacharjee, a film producer says, "The Singapore tourism board is planning to invite film projects from India as they have begun to realise the benefit that such travels create in terms of a increase in tourism.

Air New Zealand offers special film crew fares and special privileges to New Zealand for shooting. "In the last two years, we've seen an increase of about 50 per cent in the number of film crews that have travelled to New Zealand," said Sameen Mirza, senior executive - sales, Air New Zealand.

While the New Zealand Tourism board provides subsidies to television documentaries based on travel and tourism, local production lines such as Kuran, which caters to Indian projects, are quite active through offering discounts for stays and internal travel.

"Although we do not offer exclusive discounts directly to film projects, it is done through local production agencies, which help the Indian film makers in various ways including cash assistance depending on projects," said Kiran Nambiar, country manager India, New Zealand Tourism Board.

Bavaria, one of the 16 federal states in Germany and home to about 30 Indian information technology companies is also glancing at attracting filmmakers from Bollywood and other regional film centres to their region for on-location shooting.

"The only problem the film industry might face is that these locations may not be easily identifiable by individuals in Hindi films, and the only way to change that is to increase traffic to Bavaria," said, Peter Englert, head, international operations, gotoBavaria, a State agency for Media and Information Technology.