Purpose Tourism encompasses multiple activities along with actors, locations and roles involved. Thus, tourism development and planning should consider value-added activities that form a tourism value chain (TVC). In the literature, the conceptual and practical understanding of TVC is significantly diverse, making it challenging to comprehend the entire framework. This study aims to synthesize a general TVC framework. Design/methodology/approach This review uses the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses protocol to search for and select relevant literature in two databases (Scopus® and Web of Science™). Covering six aspects (logic, scope, value, perspective, type and scale), this study systematically analyzes the selected empirical studies to synthesize a functional framework of TVC as the basis to explore insights for effective TVC practices. Findings The results show that existing empirical studies have adopted four types of logic (supply logic, destination logic, global value chain and tourism global value chain), which complement each other in explaining the entire concept of TVC. Besides, the TVC concept is applicable on various scales and in different types of tourism with slight practical differences. Furthermore, values appear in various forms and offer benefits for suppliers and consumers as primary actors in TVC. Findings for the six aspects form tourism value webs as the functional framework of TVC. Originality/value This study offers a wide-ranging review of various empirically implemented TVC concepts for comprehensive TVC-based tourism development and planning. This review sets a theoretical foundation for future studies to improve the body of knowledge of TVC and tourism development and planning in general.