Abstract: Using 47 municipal regions in Southwest China for the research unit, this article chooses 13 indicators which can reflect the tourism economy from 2003 to 2012. By use of the factor analysis of SPSS19.0 to obtain the scores of each municipal tourism economy, and in combination with the spatial analysis tool of GIS, this article analyzes the spatial difference of city tourism economy in Southwest China. The results are shown as followed:(1)The spatial differences of tourism economy in Southwest China are notable, taking a macro-trend of bigger differences in east and north, smaller differences in west and south;(2)Developed tourism economic areas are chiefly located in the municipality under direct administration of the central government and the provincial capital cities, while the backward areas are located in the industrial cities, and cites with poor tourism resources endowment, or cities with poor traffic accessibility.(3)The major causes for the spatial difference of tourism economy in the Southwest cities are found to be the tourism resources endowment, economic development level, traffic accessibility and Policy support.