Clinging to a cliff, this Yemeni village once bustled with tourists drawn by its mountain views, centuries-old stone houses and narrow alleys.

Now it is eerily quiet in the thin air of Kawkaban, 2 800 metres above sea level. Coachloads of visitors no longer arrive from the capital Sanaa, 35km away.

Faded signs adorn long-closed guest houses and restaurants. Village boys play in the street outside one deserted hotel.

Yemen had looked to tourism as an alternative to dwindling oil income, which plunged to $2-billion last year from $4,4-billion in 2008, but attacks by al-Qaeda militants, kidnappings and chronic instability have driven most foreign visitors away.

"The tourism sector is facing a huge problem. Bookings from Europe have dropped 90 percent," said Abu Taleb, a travel agent in Sanaa. "It should be high season right now. Some people still come, but at their own risk."

In the past Yemeni tribesmen frequently kidnapped foreigners to try to force the government to deliver local benefits and usually freed their victims unharmed. But a resurgence in al-Qaeda militancy now keeps all but the boldest tourists away.

The government declared "open war" on the militants after the Yemen-based al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula claimed responsibility for a failed December 25 attack on a US airliner.

But state control is weak in many parts of Yemen, a country almost as big as France. The tourists who do venture here can explore the stunning old city of Sanaa, the sleepy southern port of Aden or the distant island of Socotra - but little else.

Foreigners need police permits to travel outside Sanaa, a measure authorities say is meant to protect them.

The scenic Sanaa-Aden road via the mountainous city of Taiz is risky because of separatist unrest in the south.

The northern city of Saada, famous for its old town, is a war zone where government forces battle so-called Houthi rebels. Hadramaut in the southeast, home to the 16th century towers of Shibam, dubbed the "Manhattan of the desert", is also off limits. So is the lawless eastern region of Maarib, where the pre-Islamic kingdom of Saba had its capital.

"Nobody is coming because of all the problems," complained Motjar al-Thawar, a shopkeeper in the old city of Sanaa selling the traditional daggers worn by Yemeni tribesmen.

Al-Qaeda has mounted several attacks on tourists, including a suicide bombing that killed four South Koreans in Hadramaut in March 2009. Gunmen killed two Belgian women in January 2008. A car bomb blast killed seven Spaniards in Maarib in July 2007.

Last month, a Yemeni official said negotiations had begun with the kidnappers of a German couple and their three children and a Briton held since June. Three other foreigners abducted at the same time in the northern province of Saada were found dead.

The Houthis have denied they were behind the kidnapping, for which no group has claimed responsibility.

The slump in tourism is more bad news for an impoverished country of 23 million people, of whom more than 40 percent survive on less than $2 (about R14) a day.

"The number of European tourists has started to fall, this is for sure," Tourism Minister Nabil al-Faqih acknowledged in a recent interview, adding that Yemen would try to attract more Gulf Arab and other Middle Eastern visitors to compensate.

But Yemen's reported plans to lure a million visitors a year by 2010 and 1,5 million by 2015 look doomed, diplomats say.

Official figures include anyone with a tourist visa - which means business people, oil contractors and Yemenis with foreign passports, as well as genuine holidaymakers.

Local analysts say tourism never contributed more than two or three percent of Gross Domestic Product - well below the 6,5 percent target mentioned on the tourism ministry's website.

Some donors still fund projects to develop tourism but officials privately say their best hope is to persuade Yemeni expatriates to spend their summer vacation at home. - Reuters