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The tourist sites of Kozani are the major tourist attractions in western Macedonia, attracting over half a million visitors per year. They are unique in that they are culture sites and must be preserved as national monuments but at the same time they function as modern business enterprises. This paper explores the role of management accounting in the tourist sites in Kozani. The paper is motivated by the lack of management accounting research in the tourism sector in general. The analysis is based on a case study of four of the public tourist companies that are currently in operation in Kozani region. Data were collected from semi-structured interviews, informal discussions and document analysis. Drawing on ideas from New Institutional Sociology (NIS) we argue that the operations and decision making, including the role of management accounting information in the public tourist companies are shaped by the need for the companies to legitimize themselves as national monuments and at the same time innovate to remain competitive in a changing tourism environment. The ownership of the majority of the companies by the Municipal Councils also made the operations and decision making of these companies subject to local politics