Poland looks to build on 40 Indian ad films shot in the country last year

As part of its ongoing 'Polska - Come and Find Your Story' campaign, Poland Tourist Organisation (PTO) in association with Poland Convention Bureau, conducted a three-city road show covering Mumbai, Bengaluru and New Delhi in early April 2014. The intent was to promote business and leisure tourism to the country from India.

According to Emilia Kubik, project leader, Polish Tourist Organisation, 13 million Euros have been invested in the campaign, which began in mid-2013 and run till end-2015. Eighty per cent of the budget is for the Chinese market and the remaining is split evenly between India and Japan.

In conversation with Campaign India, Kubik explained the tourist inflow from India. She said, "Being part of the Schengen zone is not great for statistics. So, since 2007 there's no proper research for the number of travellers (as they can travel in from any Schengen country). The number of overnights from Indians were 35,000 in 2013 (number of nights, not individuals). It has been growing steadily over the past 10 years. Most of the visitors are for MICE (meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibition) travel and very few are for tourism alone."

While there are no numbers yet to prove the success of the campaign, Kubik says that it has played a role in increasing visits from India. She said, "We've had high traffic on our website from India ever since the campaign began. The campaign is running in three countries and our objective is to get 1,00,000 more arrivals from India, China and Japan at the end of it."

Kubik claims that most of Poland's visitors come from the European countries close to it (Ukraine, Germany, Belarus etc). USA provides the highest visitors from non-European countries and India ranks outside the top 10.

Destination for films

A number of ad films have been shot by Indian agencies in Poland. From MTS’ ‘Internet Baby’ to Killer’s ‘Green Fold’, the examples are many.

Kubik added, "There were 40 TVCs shot for Indian ads by Polish production houses. In Poland we have got Alvernia Studios. The studio looks like it's out of this planet and people from all over the world visit for production. They've got the high-end technology and it's cheaper than Western Europe and that's what makes it doubly attractive. Along with the 40 TVCs, we also had Bhaag Milkha Bhaag's post production that was done in the country. We've got a lot of schools as well for DOPs.”

Besides the technical infrastructure and talent, there’s another reason why film makers seek out Poland, explained Kubik. She explained, “Polish people are compared to the Punjabis of India because they're easy going and open hearted and that's one of the reasons why the film fraternity clicked with us. We want to invite Bollywood film producers to shoot more movies in the country and we've managed to convince two of them which will be shot later in April and May.”

She surmised, “We're looking for more projects as well."