"The Sound of Music", one of Hollywood's greatest money-spinners,
will scale new heights when the original von Trapp family villa near Salzburg
opens as a hotel in July.

SALZBURG, AUSTRIA (MAY 13, 2008) REUTERS-

You watched the film countless times? but have you done "The
Sound Of Music" tour through Salzburg?
    Entrepreneurs in the picturesque Alpine town of Salzburg are adding yet
more to the must-do and must-have list of aficionados of the one of
Hollywood's greatest money spinners.
    The Sound Of Music -- a film based on the story of how aspiring nun
Maria sings her way into the hearts of the Baron von Trapp and his seven
children in Salzburg -- is one of Hollywood's best known film productions and
has kept cash tills in the city ringing ever since it hit the screens in
1965.
    While the country is still reeling from the Amstetten incest case that
catapulted it into the international media spotlight, the original von Trapp
family home will be reopened as a hotel and the famous gazebo where Liesl, the
eldest of the von Trapp daughters in the film, and her boyfriend Rolf meet
secretly and perform the showstopper "I am 16 going on 17" will be
available to fans as a self-assembly construction set.
    As of July, the hotel will give people for around 100 euros (155 USD) a
night the chance to lay their head to rest where the von Trapp family once
lived, get married in the house's chapel or have a Sound of Music dinner in
the family dining and afterwards smoke on the villa terrace.
    After the von Trapp family left Austria in the late 1938 to the United
States to flee Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime, the house served as a home for Nazi
commander Heinrich Himmler. In 1947, the Missionaries of the Precious Blood
bought it of the von Trapp family, and have now agreed for it to become a
hotel.
       Tourists from North America, Asia and Great Britain -- where the
film has been  popular -- generate some 700,000 overnight stays in Salzburg
every year, according to tourism officials.
    For 40 percent of these visitors, the film is the sole reason to visit
the city and 30 percent of them have seen it more than eight times. Meanwhile,
around 90 percent are joining one of the city's tour operators to view the
sites where the film was shot, like Mirabell park of Leopoldskron Palace.
       U.S. ticket tracking site www.boxofficemojo.com ranks film as the
third most successful movie of all times on the domestic market, taking
inflation into account, topped only by "Gone With the Wind" and
"Star Wars".
    Its soundtrack has sold millions of times since and has been reproduced
as a musical in Britain and elsewhere, inspiring reality shows to recruit its
cast while fans around the globe can gather in cinemas for sing-a-long
screenings.
    Coming to Salzburg to see where the movie was shot is for many, like
Lana Wright from New Zealand, a dream came true.
    "It was almost a feeling like 'you've come home'," said
Wright, 53, with watery eyes as she stepped off the tour bus.
    "Finally I have arrived, arrived somewhere where I was supposed to
be, somewhere that I was supposed to see."
      It's a classic -- you can watch it over and over again, and love it
every single time," said Canadian Tamara Reim, 23.