Abstract: To reduce the energy consumption in tourism industry and to promote green tourism development, this study investigates how to improve tourism energy efficiency. Based on the environmental directional distance function, this paper firstly constructed a Biennial Malmquist-Luenberger (BML) productivity index according to tourism characteristics. Then the tourism energy efficiency was evaluated with a sample of 30 cities over 9 years from 2005 to 2013. The changes of tourism energy efficiency can be attributed to five factors, namely total factor productivity, capital substitution effect on energy, labor substitution effect on energy, energy structure effect and output structure effect. Results show that: (1) the overall energy efficiency of China’s tourism industry is at quite a low level in average, indicating a great potential to expand. (2) The improvement of total factor productivity, capital substitution, labor substitution and energy structure effect can promote tourism energy efficiency. (3) The impacts of capital substitution, labor substitution and energy structure on tourism energy efficiency have overtaken the total factor productivity in the past three years. (4) In terms of a spatial scale, the tourism energy efficiency in the eastern China is higher than that in the Midwestern China over the sample period, primarily caused by the difference of capital substitution and energy structure. (5) The tourism energy efficiency of 17 cities shows a downward trend from 2005 to 2013, nevertheless, affected by different factors. The capital substitution is the dominant contributor to tourism energy efficiency decline in most provinces, such as Hubei, Fujian and Zhejiang, whereas the total factor productivity is the main contributor in the provinces of Anhui, Hainan, Guizhou and Gansu. In sum, the rational utilization of resources is essential for low-energy consumption development in tourism industry. The substitution effect of capital for energy should be brought into full play since efficient allocation of capital can greatly improve the energy efficiency of tourism industry.