The evolution of ICTs and the internet has a clear influence on all areas of tourist destination development, both directly and indirectly, and in both internal and external tasks. Destinations face a new cycle of growth, one in which they must take advantage – to varying degrees – of the use of new technological developments as well as new formulae and strategies for management and planning. Essentially, the challenge is to tackle with assurance the need for reorientation towards a model that is more efficient, one that is adapted to changes in demand, and is based on an integration of all the elements making up the destination, the tourists and the local population.

In this context there emerges a new framework for management, a basic feature of which is the governance of tourism, and in which ICTs and the internet are key factors in the transition to the new model of smart tourism destinations. An important part of the basis for this framework will be knowledge and the active participation of all agents.

This contribution seeks to provide an overview of current research into sustainable tourism from two angles. It describes firstly the key arguments in the theoretical discussion on the idea of sustainability in the tourism sector, and secondly the areas of academic research that are of interest for research into tourism and sustainability. This study will enable a global evaluation of not only the factors that influence the discussion on the sustainability of tourism, but also the central thematic areas in which this matter is addressed.

Tourism as a social practice has undergone radical change, moving away from a vertical Fordist production system towards a much more disperse nexus comprising the production and consumption of experiences. A combination of the desire of tourists to live like locals and the desire of locals to become producers of tourist experiences has driven a new trend for 'living like a local'. This demand is met by a variety of products and experiences offered from the top down. The meanings associated with the practice of tourism have also changed as more people have become tourists and many of us have become involved in the tourism industry.

The assumption that tourism growth can be sustainable is widespread in certain academic sectors and public institutions. It is an assumption that is partly founded on the Tourist Multiplier theory, proposed by Archer and Owen in the early 1970s. However, this premise is coming up against an increasingly urgent reality: the finite nature of our planet and its resources. Economic development has natural limits. The article presents a conflictivist view of tourism development that is more in line with this reality: The emergence of new economic activity – or its growth – forces us to restructure our use of the available resources. These resources cannot always be multiplied. And as part of this process, some will lose and others will win.

Publications on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in the tourism sector stem from the paradigm of sustainable tourism, in which there has been growing interest in relation to balancing the impacts of the tourism industry in terms of the key environmental, social and corporate issues. The two themes that have generated most references are, firstly, the business case or the possible relationship between its introduction and corporate financial performance, and secondly, commitments to stakeholders. Apart from these themes related to the drivers, publications have also focused on topics such as the types of practices implemented and other types of results achieved by them. In all these fields there is still great potential for development, while new themes are also emerging.

Tourism is one of the main areas where the sharing economy is expanding. The increasing number of press and journal articles on the topic highlights the relevance – on various levels – of platforms such as Airbnb, Uber or BlaBlaCar. This paper will tackle different aspects of this subject. First, the notion of the sharing economy or collaborative consumption will be defined, examining both its initial definitions that addressed the possibility of a new economic paradigm and more recent descriptions looking at the commercial aspects and the particularities introduced by the use of major technological platforms. The focus then moves on to three aspects that shed light on convergences between sharing economy and tourism: the use of information and communication technologies, the role of references or qualifications, and the disruption of preexisting models. Finally, the conclusions from the study are drawn.

This contribution seeks to provide an overview of current research into sustainable tourism from two angles. It describes firstly the key arguments in the theoretical discussion on the idea of sustainability in the tourism sector, and secondly the areas of academic research that are of interest for research into tourism and sustainability. This study will enable a global evaluation of not only the factors that influence the discussion on the sustainability of tourism, but also the central thematic areas in which this matter is addressed.