This article calculated tourism industry efficiency of China in 1999-2008 using the method of data envelopment analysis(DEA),which could set multi input and output indexes,avoiding inadequacy of using only one input and output index.Then it classified the tourism industry efficiency into two categories,pure technological efficiency and scale efficiency for seeking the cause of diverse land production efficiency.The results suggest the following.(1) The tourism industry efficiency fluctuated in 1999-2008,with the average being 0.330,indicating that tourism industry efficiency was low.(2) Tourism industry efficiency was different among 31 provinces in China.A few provinces in eastern China had high tourism efficiency,while some provinces in central China and western China had lower efficiency.(3) Tourism industry efficiency and pure technological efficiency had the same changing trend,which showed that the changes of tourism industry efficiency were mainly due to pure technological efficiency.(4) Almost all the provinces had an increasing trend.