On the twenty-fifth anniversary of the opening of the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya and its Economics and Business Studies, a group of professors from the tourism field of the institution reflect upon the current situation of the sector at a key moment. On the one hand, they bring their ideas on what has been the evolution of tourism over the last twenty-five years and the elements and key factors that have conditioned this evolution to date. On the other hand, based on the crisis generated by the effects of the pandemic, they deliberate on identifying possible future scenarios and the key factors that may condition them.

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.