In recent years, there has been an increase in international tourist arrivals worldwide. In this respect, Art Cities are among the most favorable tourist destinations, as they exhibit masterpieces of art and architecture in a cultural environment. However, the so-called phenomenon of overtourism has emerged as a significant threat to the residents’ quality of life, and, consequently, the sustainability of Art Cites. This research aims to develop a management toolkit that assists site managers to control tourism flows in Art Cities and World Heritage Sites and promotes the residents’ quality of life. The research methodology was developed within the framework of the Atlas Project in 2019. In this project, five European Art Cities, including Florence, Edinburgh, Bordeaux, Porto, and Santiago de Compostela, discussed their common management challenges through the shared learning method. After developing selection criteria, the Atlas’ partners suggested a total of nine strategies as best practices for managing overtourism in Art Cities in multiple sections of accommodation policies, monitoring tactics, and promotional offerings. The Atlas project was conducted before the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus pandemic. Based on the current data, it is somehow uncertain when and how tourism activities will return to normal. The analysis of the Atlas findings also highlights some neglected dimensions in the current strategies in terms of environmental concerns, climate change impacts, crisis management, and cultural development plans, which require further research to boost the heritage planning process.

This study analyses tourist flows in the UNESCO World Heritage Historic Centre of Florence before the occurrence of the COVID-19 crisis and examines how the pandemic has impacted the city. We build a system of indicators to measure the carrying capacity of art cities, assessing the risk exposure of these historic settings to overtourism. The model provides a detailed picture of the evolving tourism phenomenon and the economic, social, and environmental implications thereof. The indicators system supports local decision-makers in monitoring tourism flows and evaluating critical policies to preserve the destination heritage. It further examines the sustainable strategy implemented by the Municipality of Florence towards tourism recovery, as cities of art need to protect their cultural heritage and balance the needs of residents and tourists.

Intellectual capital (IC) as well as disclosure of information on IC has in recent years gained importance. IC is the key issue in strengthening a firm’s competitive position and in achieving its objectives. The purpose of this study is to investigate some determinants of the disclosure of IC in annual reports. In particular the aim of this research is to analyse the internal mechanisms of corporate governance (board composition, role duality, ownership structure, auditor type and size of audit committee), which influence the intellectual capital disclosure in corporate annual reports for a sample of all listed Italian firms at 31st December 2010. It has been used a disclosure index as a dependent variable, (ICD), and the method used to measure it is content analysis.

In this paper, we examine the marginal value of extra liquidity for a sample of excess cash listed companies (i.e. ECs) operating in the five largest E.U. economies (France, Italy, Germany, Spain and UK). After had shown that these companies are generally penalised by the market, in line with previous literature, we show that extra cash held is not detrimental to shareholder value when it is combined with high investment opportunities leading, hence, in a premium of 1€ extra held. This relation is even stronger during the financial crisis of 2008. These results confirm that the main reason why ECs are generally valued less by the market is the concern that their managers may deploy excess cash in value-destroying activities. However, EC firms are not penalized ceteris paribus when there are investment opportunities. In addition, such relation is stronger with the presence of financial constraints and lack of liquidity, as explained by the transaction and precautionary motive for holding cash.