Hainan, as an important tourist destination, faces the dual challenges of fragile ecological environment and rapid development of tourism. Under the background of peak carbon neutral strategy, it is important to assess the carbon emission efficiency of Hainan tourism and optimize the emission reduction path. This study evaluates the carbon emission efficiency of Hainan tourism from 2013 to 2024 based on the entropy weight method and the super-efficiency-SBM model, analyzes the temporal and spatial evolution of the carbon emission efficiency by using the Markov chain, and proposes an optimization scheme of the emission reduction path. The results show that the carbon emission of Hainan tourism increases from 2,326,690,000 tons to 8,364,280 tons in 2013-2023, with a growth of 3.595 times, and decreases to 3,538,260,000 tons in 2024, with a decrease of 57.70%; the carbon emission intensity of the tourism industry decreases from 2.064 tons/yuan in 2013 to 0.427 tons/yuan in 2024, with a decrease of 79.31%. The carbon emission intensity of tourism will drop from 2.064 tons/yuan in 2013 to 0.427 tons/yuan in 2024, a decrease of 79.31%. From the perspective of spatial distribution, the carbon emission efficiency of the tourism industry in the eastern region of Hainan is higher than that in the central and western regions, but it is a “W”-shaped slow decline trend; the efficiency of the western region starts from a lower point but fluctuates and rises. Markov chain analysis shows that the convergence effect of the tourism industry’s carbon emission efficiency club in the period of 2020-2024 (0.662) is enhanced compared with that in the period of 2013-2019, and the efficiency club stabilizes in the poles, which is the most probable. The possibility of the efficiency club is the largest. It is concluded that the low-carbon development of Hainan tourism should optimize the tourism traffic structure, define the key areas for emission reduction, strengthen regional collaboration, change the development mode, control the scale of hospitality, improve the technical level and promote the construction of new urbanization, so as to build a comprehensive path system for carbon emission reduction in the tourism industry.
