Tourism has turned out to be one of the most affected areas of socio-economic activity due to the spread of the pandemic. Restrictions on the movement of citizens practically brought down international tourism and caused serious damage to the national economies of those countries in which income from tourism activities made a significant contribution to the country's GDP. Efforts to create sustainable tourism systems have been destroyed, and the theory of sustainable tourism development itself needs to be updated. The relevance of this study is due to the fact that the tourism industry, which is experiencing the deepest decline in the history of tourism development, should receive new tools necessary for its restoration and further sustainable development. The study used monographic, statistical, comparative and other methods of scientific research, which made it possible to identify and formulate the author's proposals to expand the concept of sustainable tourism development. It is quite obvious that after the pandemic, world tourism will recover, but this will be a period of tourism development completely different from the previous stages. In the course of the research, the features of tourism development in the context of the so-called new reality were investigated. It is shown that the safety of tourism in terms of compliance with sanitary and epidemiological standards has become one of the important parameters in assessing the competitiveness of tourist destinations. As a result of the study, a proposal was formulated and substantiated that the concept of sustainable tourism development, in addition to economic, environmental and social components, must be supplemented with an information and communication component, as the most important attribute of the global digitalization of society.