The Role of Handicraft Production and Art in Tourism and its Presentation in the Internet

Recently the role of handicraft and art in the tourism industry has become an important object of research. The integration of souvenir production and traditional handicraft production respectively seminars, workshops and exhibitions for the cultural interested tourist is an ideal platform to establish virtual organisations as it is defined by Mowshowitz. This paper describes briefly the situation of the linen production in a region of Upper Austria (Mühlviertel). It describes a framework for potentially exploiting the different providers and organisations within a virtual organisation which is based on a WWW-solution. We are convinced that virtual organisations are the appropriate vehicle for integrating the heterogeneous tourism relevant providers. The Internet (respectively WWW) could deliver the necessary infrastructure. Although this paper focuses a special region its results and scope are generally applicable.