A collaborative travel service portal with multi-level authentication

This article presents a collaborative travel portal with ecommerce and operation services based on multi-level authentication. The portal provides composite ecommerce service for tourists and distributed operation services for a virtual travel enterprise. The virtual enterprise is kind of dynamic coalition, and reorganized by tourism-related cross-regional business agencies. The portal has been developed based on two years of survey and interview with hundreds of prestigious travel agencies and practitioners. The portal-related issues have been addressed, e.g., ecommerce model, portal operation model, resource sharing and route scheduling, multi-level authorization and business collaboration, and financial balance between tourism businesses. The travel portal has been developed and operating with several members in Yangtze River Delta of China.