Tourism is widely regarded as a tool for regional development; however, in the absence of integrated planning, it may lead to unstable and unsustainable outcomes, particularly in arid and desert regions. The present study aims to analyze the impacts of tourism on regional sustainable development across economic, socio-cultural, and environmental dimensions in the Kavirat District of Aran va Bidgol County, Iran. This applied study adopts a descriptive–analytical design with a quantitative approach. The statistical population comprised 11,745 residents of the Kavirat District, from whom a sample of 260 respondents was determined using power analysis in G*Power and selected through simple random sampling. Data were collected using a researcher-developed questionnaire and analyzed in SPSS employing one-sample t-tests, independent-samples t-tests, Pearson correlation analysis, and the Friedman test. The findings indicate that residents’ perceived impacts of tourism in the economic (M = 3.00), socio-cultural (M = 2.93), and environmental (M = 3.01) dimensions were all very close to the moderate level, with none showing a statistically significant difference from the reference value (3). The Friedman test results further revealed that although the economic dimension exhibited a relatively higher priority compared to the other dimensions, this difference was not statistically significant. In addition, positive and significant correlations were observed among all dimensions of sustainable development, while no significant difference was found between the perceptions of male and female respondents. Overall, the results suggest that, in its current form, tourism has not been able to play a substantial role in achieving regional sustainable development, and its impacts remain limited from the perspective of the local community. This underscores the need to shift toward more planned, participatory, and context-sensitive tourism development models tailored to the capacities of desert regions.