Tourism is regarded as the driving force of regional economic development, which can increase residents’ income, promote employment opportunities, and connect the development of relevant industrial departments. However, the hypothesis that tourism development brings economic growth has always been controversial and has not been unanimously accepted by the academic community. Under the framework of economic growth theory, this paper uses the general equilibrium analysis method to explore the changes of industrial transfer and residents’ welfare utility brought by the development of tourism industry. And this paper empirically analyzes the impact of tourism development on China’s economy by using the difference generalized method of moments, and specifically distinguishes the differences between the economic impact of tourism development on coastal developed provinces and inland underdeveloped provinces.