As tourism industry becomes more and more important in the world economic, it’s very meaningful to know how tourism development impacts local economic growth The topic of the impact of tourism development on economic growth has got more concern for a long time This paper makes a review on the academic research in recent 20 years, 1990-2010 According to the empirical results of these researches, the relationship between tourism development and economic growth can be divided into three categories: tourism development promotes economic growth; tourism development can not promote economic growth; and the relationship between them rests on the special conditions Based on these, we conclude the new progress on this topic and some implications