Eight Bollywood directors have already signed up for the 'familiarisation trip', organised by Tourism Ireland in association with the Irish Film Board. Gulf Air has announced that it will sponsor the trip, which will take in the mountains and lakes of Wicklow, Kerry and Cork. Further possible film locations will be added to the itinerary closer to the time.

Following the upsurge in hostilities in the Kashmir region . . . traditionally the favourite location for Bollywood films' hugely popular dream and fantasy sequences . . . Indian directors have been increasingly looking west to source their mountains and valleys. Eleven Bollywood productions have been partially shot in Ireland in the past two years. Now, the Irish Film Board is hoping to entice whole productions to these shores. "We first went over there three years ago, " said Louise Ryan of the Irish Film Board, "and very few people knew anything about Ireland.

We were able to demonstrate that we have a sustainable film industry here and 11 films came as a result. Now we want to up the ante and get an entire feature film over here."

To this end, representatives from the Irish Film Board travelled to India last week with the Taoiseach and the Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism, John O'Donoghue. A "cultural agreement", promoting "closer relations and understanding between both countries" across the arts was signed by O'Donoghue and the Indian Minister for Culture, Jaipal Reddy, on Thursday. As well as outlining the tax incentives enjoyed by filmmakers in Ireland, the Irish Film Board briefed producers on the Locations Services Unit, which offers a database containing over 10,000 photos of Irish locations.

The Irish film industry's promotional tour of India comes against a backdrop of tumbling revenue from visiting productions. Foreign spending on films made in Ireland fell to a nine-year low last year after countries in eastern Europe lured American film-makers with lower costs and more competitive tax incentives. "Our section 481 (which allows film makers to save as much as 12% of their budgets in tax breaks) has been copied elsewhere and improved upon, " O'Donoghue said last week. "There are very strong arguments for either raising the cap significantly or getting rid of it altogether if one wants to get in very large productions."

Most of the Bollywood films that have used Irish locations thus far have come from production companies based in Chennai, in the southeast of the country, and have tended to be low-budget. One of the aims of O'Donoghue's mission to Mumbai has been to raise awareness of Ireland in larger cities, where the more affluent end of Indian film production is based.

In 2001, more than 1,000 films were produced in India, generating an incredible 1.28bn and making it the world's largest feature film producer. The majority of these films are in the South Indian languages of Telugu, Tamil and Malayalam, but it is the Hindi-language films of Bollywood (the word is a corruption of Bombay . . . the former name of Mumbai . . . and Hollywood) that account for the largest share of the box office.

While Indian cinema audiences are now appreciating lush scenes of star-crossed lovers being blessed by the gods just beyond the Sally Gap, other Bollywood producers have brought their business to Switzerland, the UK and New Zealand. As a result of their elevated status in Indian cinema, 75,000 Indians visited the Swiss Alps last year . . . 10 times the number visiting Ireland. "They were so enthralled by what they saw on the screen that they wanted to see it in person, " said Fiona Scott of Tourism Ireland. "We have scenery every bit as beautiful, and we're hoping that this incentive will have a similar effect on Irish tourism as it did for the Swiss. India has a burgeoning middle class with disposable income and they are interested in travel."