This paper examines how bilateral distances shape Chinese enterprises’ outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) in tourism in Belt and Road (B&R) countries. The results indicate that while geographic distance is not a key factor explaining the location choice of Chinese tourism OFDI in B&R countries, cultural distance hinders this location choice in a linear and monotonic way. Chinese enterprises prefer B&R countries with a short institutional distance from China for OFDI in tourism to avoid the outsider disadvantage. Moreover, market scale is found to be a moderating factor influencing the impacts of various distances on tourism OFDI location choice.