Tourism is a dominant comprehensive industry with strong industrial relevance. Tourism in urban areas has a positive impact on industrial structure upgrading through stimulating consumption, increasing employment, promoting investment and cluster development, etc. In order to test the impact of tourism on industrial structure upgrading in urban areas, this paper employs the panel data of 20 tourist cities in China from 2005 to 2019, and makes an empirical analysis, using systematic GMM method. The results show that the development of tourism in urban areas plays a positive role in promoting the upgrading of industrial structure on the whole, but it has different effects on the upgrading of industrial structure in different types of cities. This is mainly demonstrated in the following aspects; the development of tourism in urban areas has a significant positive effect on the industrial structure upgrading of provincial capital cities, but it has no significant promoting effect on the industrial structure upgrading of other non-provincial capital cities. In view of this, some policy suggestions are put forward, such as promoting the development of regional tourism and accelerating the construction of major projects with regional impact.