Objectives: The purpose of this research is to analyze impact of tourism industry on economic development with regard to the mediating role of tourism policy.

Methods: This study is applied in terms of purpose, descriptive and survey method. The statistical sample in this study is 102 employees of the Department of Cultural Heritage and Tourism of Fars province, who were randomly selected. In order to analyze data, partial least squares method was used.

Results: The findings show that measurement tool has good validity and its reliability coefficient is more than 0.7 for all research constructs. The obtained results indicate that the mediating role of tourism policy on the relationship between the tourism industry and the creation and increase of employment, considering that the t-statistic is greater than the default value of 1.96 at the confidence level of 0.05.

Discussion: As a result of mediating role of policy Tourism investment is confirmed in the first hypothesis. Considering that the t-statistic is smaller than the default value of 1.96 at the confidence level of 0.05, the mediating role of tourism policy in the second hypothesis is rejected. On other hand, regarding the third hypothesis, although the t-statistic is greater than the default value of 1.962 at confidence level of 0.05, but VAF value is 0.158, so this hypothesis is also rejected. Regarding the fourth hypothesis, considering that the t-statistic is greater than the default value of 1.96 at the confidence level of 0.05, the mediating role in the fourth hypothesis is confirmed.