New Delhi, Dec. 8: Life of Pi director Ang Lee and its novelist Yann Martel have been given the National Tourism Award for promoting Puducherry and Kerala’s Munnar as tourist destinations.

“We hope this will encourage more foreign producers to shoot their films in India,” said tourism minister K. Chiranjeevi.

The film revolves around Pi, a Puducherry boy who is the sole human survivor of a storm-hit Japanese ship headed to Canada. After the ship sinks in the Pacific, Pi is stranded in a lifeboat with a tiger. The opening parts of the film are shot in Puducherry and Munnar.

Plans are afoot to use the film, which has done well in China, to tap the Chinese tourist market. “Since the film is popular in China, we hope a lot of people will be eager to know more about Puducherry and Munnar. All we have to do is to sustain the interest the film has created,” a tourism ministry official said.

Every year, nearly a crore Chinese nationals travel abroad, of whom only a lakh land up in India.

To draw Chinese tourists, the Incredible India website will be launched in the Chinese language. “If we target the Chinese tourist, logic demands that our website be in Chinese. We have taken an in-principle decision to do it but will need six months to a year to execute it,” the official said.

Chinese tourists avoid coming to India because of the dearth of Chinese-speaking tour guides. The ministry is trying to hire guides fluent in Chinese.

The ministry has also written to the Puducherry and Kerala governments to start a multi-media campaign using the film to attract domestic as well as international tourists.

“Since air fares to Bangkok are almost similar to fares to Kerala, we are even losing domestic tourists. We have to be aggressive to keep our domestic market intact,” another official said.