Global change is induced by human activities and these changes impact tourism development. The transportation system especially aviation consumed by tourists and accommodation facilities in coastal destinations release massive greenhouse gases and contribute to global change. The ocean is very important to the society and the economy, and coastal tourism is one of the main human activities in the coastal zone. Coastal tourism resources are rich in China, and coastal tourism plays a decisive role in the marine economy. Here, we analyze problems and challenges during the development of coastal tourism resources from the global change perspective, and identify key factors for the future and ecologically friendly coastal tourism resource development and management under the framework of sustainable development. Based on our findings we recommend changing the pattern and products of coastal tourism to develop low carbon coastal tourism based on the idea of “green thinking”; more attention on developments of creative tourism products such as ecotourism and alternative tourism; changes to coastal tourism resource utilization by developing low carbon coastal tourism, advocating carbon emission reduction, promoting carbon compensation and carbon economy, and encouraging new energy saving technology application. Stakeholders also need to be considered. All these measures should be implemented and optimized during the process of planning-management-monitoring-evaluation in the dynamic model. Due to limited data on coastal tourism resource development and management in the global change perspective, part of our reference data is from whole tourism research results and this is a shortcoming of our approach.