When members of the International Indian Film Academy were scouring the globe looking for a suitable venue for their annual awards ceremony, they had the choice of both New York and Paris.

It is a measure of Britain’s importance to Bollywood, the world’s most prolific film industry, that this year the academy chose Yorkshire.

Outside India, the UK is Bollywood’s biggest market with Hindi films routinely screened by the three largest multiplex chains and making the top-ten box office charts.

Bollywood is also bearing the “Made in Britain” kitemark, with more and more Indian directors migrating to London as a favoured shooting location. Last year, more than 40 Bollywood films were shot in the capital, including Namaste London, Vipul Shah’s £3 million hit about the cultural gaps between generations of non-resident Indians.

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“Britain has always been a home away from home,” Yash Chopra, the studio owner voted Bollywood’s most powerful player, said. He was one of the first directors to shoot outside India and has a lake in Switzerland named after him for his services to tourism.

Bollywood’s new fascination with London is bringing a new breed of Indian tourist to the UK. Whereas their parents flocked to the Swiss Alps to visit the faux-Kashmiri backdrop against which their silver-screen heroes sang and danced their way to a schmaltzy denouement, the twenty-somethings and thirtysomethings of India today are drawn to the London landmarks they see in contemporary films.

James Bidwell, chief executive of Visit London, the tourism promotion agency, said: “The heritage and depth of connection [between India and Britain] is powerful, but the younger tourists are coming for Bollywood.”

Financially empowered by Western-standard pay packets, Indian tourists are an important source of revenue for the UK as they stay in the top hotels and dine in all the best restaurants. They numbered 212,000 in London last year, spending more than the Japanese. Each time they visited, they spent on average £645 per head, generating £139 million for the metropolitan economy. “We can see that doubling or tripling in the next three years,” Mr Bidwell said.

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