Nowadays, tourism industry is increasingly developing along with the advancement of globalization, and tourism planning and tourism development are in the ascendant. But there is a serious tendency of narrow utilitarianism in such aspects as tourism planning and tourism development, which can be related to the weak study of basic theory of tourism.Therefore, under such circumstances, it is very urgent and necessary to take marxism as the guide to carry out theoretical deep thinking and exploration on the essential connotation of tourism. Based on this purpose, the essence of tourism is preliminarily discussed from the perspective of ontology, epistemology and value theory of marxist philosophy,which is aimed to provide a theoretical reference for the healthy development of tourism industry.