A key element of a successful tourism industry is the ability to recognize and deal with change across a wide range of key factors and the way they interact. Key drivers of global change can be classified as Economic, Social, Political, Technological and Environmental. This paper explores the way in which these key drivers could affect the global tourism industry to the year 2020. An exploration of these trends allows important change agents, on both the supply side and the demand side of tourism, to be highlighted and discussed. In response, innovative strategies can be formulated by destination managers and tourism operators to avoid strategic drift for their organisations and to develop tourism in a sustainable way.