The concept of eco-efficiency was firstly put forward in the academia by Schaltegger and Sturn in 1990. Being promoted greatly by the World Business Council for Sustainable, eco-efficiency is widely used in the assessment of ecological and economic impacts in agriculture, industry and mining, tourism and so on. Tourism eco-efficiency was firstly put forward in the academia by G ssling in 2005,and it is an important basis for the performance evaluation of regional green total factor productivity and sustainable development level. In recent years, there are many achievements in the research of tourism eco-efficiency at home and abroad. It has received increasing attention in theoretical research and policy development. The Western Development Strategy is an important strategy of the Party Central Committee, which includes not only the improvement of the level of economic development but also the improvement of the ecological environment. In this paper, based on the panel data of western provinces (cities and autonomous regions) from 2000 to 2017, the carbon emissions of tourism industry and tourism eco-efficiency are calculated by using "bottom-up" and ratio method, respectively. The temporal-spatial evolution characteristics and influencing factors of tourism eco-efficiency are analyzed in detail as well. First, a PVAR model consisting of tourism eco-efficiency, scale effect, structure effect, and technology effect is built. The impact of scale effect, structure effect, and technology effect on tourism eco-efficiency is studied using the model. Then considering the differences in energy consumption structure of each region, a panel threshold model is established to verify the non-linear relationship between development level of tourist industry and tourism eco-efficiency. The results show that (1) the tourism eco-efficiency in western region has gradually increased since the implementation of Western Development Strategy in 2000, and the level of green development continued to improve. It shows that the strategy of western development has achieved remarkable results. (2) The tourism eco-efficiency is greatly affected by its own lagging factors and technical effects. The expansion of tourist scale, optimization of industrial structure, and improvement of technological level all contribute to the improvement of tourism eco-efficiency. (3) There is a threshold effect of the influence of tourism development level on tourism eco-efficiency. The level of economic development, scale effects, and structural effects have obviously positive impacts on tourism carbon emission efficiency, while urbanization harms the tourism eco-efficiency significantly. Finally, based on the results of empirical analysis, the countermeasures are proposed to realize green and low-carbon development of tourism in western region.