China’s tourism industry has gradually transformed towards quality development in its rapid development in recent years. The traditional evaluation system is often interfered by subjective factors, which cannot reflect more accurately the level of quality development and differences among regions of tourism. This study evaluates and analyzes the level of quality development of China’s tourism industry and its regional differences based on the entropy value method, Dagum’s Gini coefficient, and kernel density estimation. First, the entropy value method is used to objectively assign weights to 22 indicators in order to assess the quality development level of tourism across the country and provinces. Second, the regional and internal differences were analyzed by Dagum Gini coefficient decomposition, and it was found that the level of quality development of China’s tourism industry showed a rising trend year by year, with the national score increasing from 21.42 to 37.13 from 2013 to 2023, with an increase of 15.71 points. Finally, the kernel density estimation method reveals the spatio-temporal dynamic evolution of the distribution of the national tourism quality development level, showing that there are large development differences among provinces. The eastern region is the highland of quality development of tourism, while the gap between the central and western regions is still obvious, but the inter-regional differences are gradually narrowing with the passage of time. Through the convergence analysis, it is found that there is a significant β-convergence phenomenon in the whole country and in all regions, indicating that regions with low levels of development are gradually narrowing the gap with regions with high levels of development. The study suggests that further strengthening of the institutional environment and economic development is needed to promote balanced regional development and quality development of tourism.
