<p>Achieving sustainable tourism development is one of the biggest challenges faced by the industry. Using 2005–2021 data from 30 Chinese provinces, this study employs the super-efficiency slack-based measure (super-SBM) model and the entropy weight method to measure tourism eco-efficiency (TEE) and tourism economic resilience (TER) and examines their heterogeneous relationship using the method of moments quantile regression (MMQR). The results reveal that both TEE and TER exhibit a positive growth trend and a spatial distribution characterized by higher concentrations in the eastern region and lower in the western region, highlighting significant regional disparities. Moreover, TER negatively affects TEE, with stronger negative impacts at higher quantiles, a conclusion supported by robustness checks. The regional heterogeneity analysis indicates that TER has a significant negative impact on TEE in the eastern and western regions, while no significant impact is observed in the central region. The moderating effect analysis shows that stronger environmental regulation (ENR) levels amplify TER’s negative impact on TEE. Overall, this study exposes the significant tradeoffs between enhancing TER and maintaining TEE, offering insights into the challenges of achieving sustainable tourism development in China and other developing nations.</p>