A tourism region is a geographical region that has been designated by a governmental organization or tourism bureau as having common cultural or environmental characteristics. These regions are often named after historical or current administrative and geographical regions. Others have names created specifically for tourism purposes. The names often evoke certain positive qualities of the area and suggest a coherent tourism experience to visitors. Countries, states, provinces, and other administrative regions are often carved up into tourism regions. In addition to drawing the attention of potential tourists, these tourism regions often provide tourists who are otherwise unfamiliar with an area with a manageable number of attractive options.

Some of the more famous tourism regions based on historical or current administrative regions include Tuscany in Italy and Yucatán in Mexico. Famous examples of regions created by a government or tourism bureau include the United Kingdom's Lake District and California's Wine Country in the United States.

Tourism scholar Jaarko Saarinen has identified a "discourse of region" in which a region's social and geographical qualities are combined with familiar and traditional representations of the region. The resulting discourse is "produced and reproduced" in the form of advertisements, travelogues, and regional literature, as well as in the larger media. Most tourism regions belong to a larger economic and administrative unit which takes on the role of developing the discourse of the tourism region into a marketable product. According to Saarinen, once the discourse of a tourism region has been established, the parent region helps shape further development of the area as a tourism region. This earlier period is characterized by rapid development, construction, investment in greater advertising, and increasing tourism. Eventually, if the region becomes successful as a tourism region, a mature stage in the development of a tourism region is reached where the "meaning and history of the destination are continually produced anew" in cycles of decline, reinvention, growth, and stability.

Historically, tourism regions often developed in areas widely considered to be of historical, cultural, or natural importance such as the Niagara Falls region of New York and Canada, the Lake District of England, the French Riviera and the Italian Riviera. Others developed around specific attractions such as a major city, i.e. Paris, or a monument such as the Pyramids of Giza. Tourist regions have existed for thousands of years for relaxation and leisure as well as for religious expression. The ancient Romans visited the hot springs of Bath in Roman Britain while Santiago de Compostela was a site of mass Christian pilgrimage supported by a major medieval tourism industry that provided travelers with accommodations along their pilgrimage route.

The modern tourism region emerged from the Industrial Revolution as cities grew in size, pollution increased, and an expanding middle class possessed greater amounts of disposable income. From the Enlightenment through the nineteenth century, the fashionable Grand Tour of continental Europe for wealthy young men popularized the idea of leisure travel. The popularity of the Grand Tour, combined with the stresses and benefits of the Industrial Revolution, encouraged wealthy and middle-class European and American families to explore leisure travel, though on a more local scale. These families began frequenting seaside resorts known for their health benefits such as the Roman resort town of Bath, particularly during hotter months that left industrializing cities extremely unpleasant.

The development of faster methods of transportation during the nineteenth century allowed tourists to travel greater distances in smaller periods of time. This period also saw the "seaside" developed as a "spatial area for 'mass tourism,'” a phenomenon that resulted in the development of specific coastal areas as tourist regions. Among elite groups in the nineteenth century, "the mountains" also became increasingly popular in the winter months; the most popular of these regions was Tyrol in Austria. Tourism regions were often subject to downward mobility as areas frequented by the upper class such as the Catskill Mountains of New York and Bath in England were abandoned by wealthier visitors when they became too popular with the middle class.

The romantic movement of the 19th century encouraged the appreciation of the natural world, leading to the explosion in popularity of scenic tourism regions such as the English Lake District and the Niagara Falls region. According to Peter Murphy, "increased competition" encouraged private development of hotels, resorts, and entertainment facilities as well as "municipal investment in parades, parks, piers, and baths." These trends marked an important intervention of the state into the evolution of tourism regions.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, governments increasingly took a role in encouraging the development of tourism regions. Federal and state governments in the United States, with the encouragement of conservation groups, and European countries and their colonies began setting aside areas as parks, monuments, and trails for preservation and future enjoyment. Some of these, such as Niagara Falls, were existing tourism regions while parks such as Yellowstone National Park were areas selected by these organizations as future tourism regions.