The 21st century is the era of information economy. With economic development and social progress, people’s
material and cultural standard of living continues to improve and leisure time continues to increase, tourism has
become increasingly popular as a kind of leisure way. The geographic information system applied to tourism
management is the preferred platform of tourism information. On the basis of introducing the concepts of Geographic
Information System (GIS) and Travel Geographic Information System (TGIS), this paper illustrates the role that the
geographic information system plays in tourism management. Tourism has a strong geographical attributes. And GIS
itself is information system offering services to geographic research and decision-making, which can play a role in
tourism management. In particular, possessing the functions, such as data collection, storage, processing, spatial
analysis and so on, GIS directly provides services for tourism management. The roles of GIS in tourism management
are mainly in the following areas: conducting tourism information management; being able to produce a
comprehensive thematic map. The paper analyzes the existing problems of GIS applications in tourism management.
Take a panoramic view of the current technology and management system, the key technology and problems to
establish TGIS are: the construction of tourism geographic information database; the establishment of data structure
and the data model; the design of Tourism Geographic Information Database System. The essay also proposes the
development prospects of the combination of GIS with new information technologies. GIS applied in Tourism
Management has played a significant role. At the same time, it should be noted that information technology
continuously changes, GIS applied in tourism management also need to improve according to the development of
information technology to adapt to the information technology development. Looking the prospects of GIS applied in
tourism management, the following areas need to be improved: RS, GPS as supplementary means applied to GIS
data collection and update to enhance information collection ability of the system; combining the multimedia and
virtual technology with GIS to enhance the attractiveness of the system for tourists; Combining the expert system
technology with GIS to enhance the capacity of the system to solve travel problems.