Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan, whose proximity to West Bengal is well-known, is now also likely to lend his persona to a new advertisement campaign of West Bengal tourism. A senior official of West Bengal Tourism recently confirmed to a news agency that the department is toying with the idea of featuring Shah Rukh Khan in its new advertisement campaign. “We are working on new advertisements to promote tourism in the state and attract both domestic as well as foreign tourists here and may feature Shah Rukh Khan in this,” tourism department principal secretary A.R. Bardhan commented. West Bengal tourism is particularly keen to promote five new tourism circuits which have been developed in the recent years. “We are aiming to increase the domestic and international footfalls in the state by ten percent annually in the coming five years,” Bardhan added.
The proposed commercial is likely to be ready in next three months and the state tourism department is expecting an expenditure of Rs 10 crore in its production. The probability of Shah Rukh Khan agreeing to do the commercial for West Bengal tourism is quite high given the fact that he is the brand ambassador of West Bengal, co-owns the IPL team of the city Kolkata Knight Riders and had also appeared in a previous ad of the state government apart from being very close to West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. Of late, the state government has taken an aggressive stance in promoting its tourism products which is well reflected in the nearly Rs 2000 crore allocation to the tourism department for the next three years for development of new circuits and tourism promotion both within India and abroad.
