Though not in WordPress, this seems to be the definitive solution to linking to Bootstrap tabs: Twitter Bootstrap Tabs: Go to Specific Tab on Page Reload or Hyperlink
That being said, I wrote a WordPress plugin that will do this. Activate the plugin, then you'll be able to use the tab's href as the hash.
If your tab looks like this:
<li><a href="#profile" role="tab" data-toggle="tab">Profile</a></li>
You can link to it and activate/open it using a link like this:
<a href="/page-with-my-tab/#profile">Link to my tab</a>
The plugin will also allow you to link directly to content on the tabs, using a sort of a two-step link: Step 1 Activate the proper tab Step 2 Scroll to the content on the tab.
It does this using only a single hash in the URL. For example: http://www.example.com/mypage/#content
This will take you to "mypage" and the HTML element with id="content", whether it's on an active/inactive Bootstrap tab or just on the page somewhere.
Hope this helps:
Here's the plugin on GitHub: https://github.com/marinersmuseum/WP-Tab-Anchors/blob/master/wp-tab-anchors.zip