Abstract Even though tourism has been facing different crises since the beginning of this century, recently it has faced the biggest economic crisis ever. Once again tourism has proved its resilience, with emerging markets playing a key role in its recovery. At the same time, the crisis has brought to the surface all weaknesses and showed an urge for innovation. Nowadays, consumers are more experienced, independent, better informed, relying more on word of mouth and social networks than on paid promotion. Additional value for money and unique experiences, have become more important than ever. This paper is pointing out these and some other trends in tourism, such as the increasing role of new tourism markets, modern technology, quality matters, etc. Despite its turbulent history and the fact that it is not a seaside destination, Serbia was one of the few countries which didn’t report any negative results in international arrivals during the global economic crisis. Nevertheless, domestic tourism suffered and stakeholders need to implement some new strategies in order to stimulate domestic tourism and enhance the international one. A review of literature on tourism and the crisis, analyses of official data (mainly from UNWTO and tourism organizations), and field research conducted in Serbia on a stratified sample of 1005 interviewed citizens give an insight into the matter of the current situation in international tourism on the one hand and Serbian tourism on the other. The main conclusions are that stakeholders in tourism are now dealing with changed consumer behaviour. By improving service quality, adding value to tourism products, offering unique experiences and events, addressing new customer segments, focusing on the markets from the region and using modern technologies as a tool for promotion and communication better results could be achieved.