This article reviews tourism development theories with respect to their spatio-temporal implications in the past thirty years. Early in the seventy, most of these models based on an origin-linkage-destination systems, with various writers giving different emphasis to these three elements and expressing them in different terms. Recently, researchers focused on the evolutionary model in developing countries. The influence of the existing social and economic structures in these countries, differentiates the tourism industry into two sectors, formal/informal sector, and recognizes the spatial segregation and different economic impacts of the sectors.