The present work intends to reflect on the proportion of academic works (existing in the Portuguese open access repository RCAAP) that use indicators to outline new sustainable tourism strategies. And what lessons can be drawn from it in the context of academic training and research in the area. A selection based on suitable criteria to the proposed objectives brought together 70 works (including master dissertations, doctoral theses, scientific articles and reports). Nvivo qualitative software was used, whose coding is one of the techniques to make sense of the collected data. The sample content was coded in topics/themes (nodes). The interaction of these nodes (themes) with the cases (documents) is fundamental in this project, because from the questions (queries) applied, lessons were derived. Most works do not address indicators/indexes, and those that do are mainly descriptive. The academic community has an important role in initiating studies on sustainability indicators and methodologies for their development. The creation and monitoring of such indicators, accessible and shareable, is the path to the informed involvement of agents and appropriate action policies.