Global socio-demographic and geopolitical changes and their consequences for the tourism The development of tourism is not only due to amount of free time, revenues and available infrastructure. The recent trends in tourism disclose a growing role of the social values and culture in general. In fact, the ongoing deep socio-demographic and geopolitical changes exercise a profound structural impact on the tourism. Their influence seem to be formidable in the travel destinations with configuration of socio-demographic and geopolitical conditions favoring tourism, as this represents an important strength in the competition on tourist market. In the same time there is a tremendous amount of recreational and tourist needs, which cannot be satisfied because of poverty among billions of people. Serious changes occurred in the structure of the free-time, in emancipation of women in the tourism and recreation, in spatio-temporal interpenetration between work and leisure, in aging of the western societies, etc. The coming “New Tourist” is not young, often is single, looks for physically active time-spending though is interested in the local culture and in human contacts. The gloomy vision of the XXI century as era of civilisation clashes unfortunately proves to be right. Today any trip planned takes into account the security as a main precondition. Apart from the business travel most of the journeys are directed to adjacent or culturally similar countries and regions. It opens interesting perspectives for the European “peripheries” and less known destinations of which Poland is particularly abundant. These new “place-products” are not linked with congestion and security threats.