Greek National Tourism Organisation (GNTO) President Angela Gerekou held extensive talks in Athens with representatives of the Embassy of India to further strengthen tourism relations between the two countries, and excitedly, bring Bollywood to Greece.
Speaking to the embassy’s Commercial Attaché, Nirmesh Kumar, and Second Secretary, Rajendran Samykannu, Gerekou said that the long cultural tradition of Greece and India could be the main point of the cooperation in both the cultural and tourism sectors.
According to GTP, she also informed the embassy’s representatives on the GNTO’s current promotion strategy and highlighted the benefits the country could offer to India’s film industry (Bollywood) as a destination ideal for movie productions.
India’s film industry is one of the fastest growing sectors in the country.
For their part, the representatives of the Embassy of India spoke of the good cooperation that exists between the two countries.
They referred to the recent visit of India’s Foreign Minister Dr. S. Jaishankar to Greece in June 2021 and his talks with his Greek counterpart Nikos Dendias, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Athens Mayor Kostas Bakoyannis.
The embassy’s representatives also presented India’s main tourism forms, which focus on architecture, gastronomy, medical tourism and film tourism (Bollywood).
Moreover, as a first step to boost tourism cooperation, both sides agreed to soon hold an informative event for representatives of the business community of both Greece and India.
READ MORE: Taizoon Khorakiwala: The Indian King of Greek food.
The value of Bollywood in the 2020 financial year was about 183 billion Indian rupees, or about USD$2.4 billion.
This was expected to more than half the following year due to the COVID-19) pandemic, but estimates for fiscal year 2022 showed a growth of 196%.
Pandemic aside, India has consistently been the world’s largest producer of films since 2007.
The South Asian country is the leading film market in terms of the number of tickets sold.
In terms of revenue, ‘Uri’ a military action film, released in 2019, generated over 876% of the original cost of the movie.
This staggering amount of return on investment ranked the sequel top of the leading movies produced in India in 2019 by return on investment.
Advertisers in India are aware of the industry’s popularity with audiences and have invested heavily in cinema based advertising.
In fiscal year 2019, the revenue generated from in-cinema advertising across India was valued at over 11 billion rupees, or about USD$145,000,00.
The Indian film industry has a variety of revenue sources and with increasing focus on digital and regional languages, the value of the industry is poised for growth.
READ MORE: PM Modi moved by Greek school students reciting national Indian song (VIDEO)