Abstract: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