China has abundant tourism resources, and the cultural and tourism industry has gradually become an emerging strategic pillar industry. The development of tourism is crucial for China's economic growth, and tourist cities are important spatial carriers for promoting economic growth through the development of the tourism industry. Based on the factor analysis of the principal component, this article constructs a competitiveness index system for popular tourist cities in China, and obtains the evaluation results of the competitiveness of these cities. Besides, cluster analysis is conducted simultaneously. The results indicate that the comprehensive competitiveness of tourist cities in China is constituted by the following aspects, namely, tourism resources, tourism development, tourism facilities, tourism management, and tourism marketing. Also, through principal component analysis, it is possible to clearly identify the sources of competitiveness of different tourist cities and develop targeted development strategies based on clustering results, thus enhancing the competitiveness of popular tourist cities in China.