20100924
reuters

ABIDJAN (Reuters) - Ivory Coast could again be a popular tourist spot and attract millions of tourists annually if elections finally end the political instability that scared them off, its tourism minister said on Thursday.

Green and tropical with miles of white sandy beaches, Ivory Coast was once West Africa's show piece as it thrived on cocoa exports and became a popular tourist destination, especially for citizens of former colonial master France.

But a 2002-3 war left the top cocoa grower divided, with the north controlled by rebels. Elections meant to end the conflict and reunite the country are scheduled for October 31, but have been delayed multiple times in the past.

Violent anti-French protests in late 2004, after a row between President Laurent Gbagbo and a French peacekeeping force, scared off thousands of expatriates and led foreign ministries everywhere to put travel warnings on Ivory Coast.

"Clearly the crisis has had an impact on tourism and even just numbers of visitors here," Tourism Minister Sidiki Konate told Reuters in an interview on the sidelines of a conference to relaunch tourism at a lagoon-side hotel.

"But the elections will enable us to retake our rightful place. We are prepared to receive 2-3 million tourists."

Konate said the country gets at least 500,000 tourist visitors annually now, but ministry officials say those figures include people coming from around the region to visit relatives, with only 250,000 of that total arriving by air, and only a fraction of those are high-spending Western tourists.

The country currently makes around 100 billion CFA francs a year from tourism, they said.