The national goal of 40-45% mitigation of the 2005 level intensity of carbon by 2020 was announced by the Chinese government at the Copenhagen Conference. Every industry in China is preparing to realize this national reduction target. Some attempts have been made to achieve low-carbon development in a few industries, but relatively little work has linked low-carbon development to tourism. This article concentrates on how to develop low-carbon tourism using a quantitative approach. Firstly, the tourism system including some mutual influence factors is investigated and some historical data are given in support for the research of their quantitative relationship. Secondly, a differential dynamic system model with fuzzy coefficients is proposed to predict tourism revenue, energy consumption, waste emissions and the carbon intensity. Finally, an application to Shizhong District of Leshan City in China (LCSD), as a representative of a world natural and cultural heritage area, is presented to show the trend of modern tourism in a low-carbon economy and prove the effectiveness of the proposed model. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.