How much am I bid for this training course?

Going cheap

By Drew Cullen, 14th October 2000

Did you know that there are £200 million worth of IT training courses going to waste each year? We neither (to tell the truth, we hadn't given this any thought).

A new Web site, Hoora.com, aims to to put this to right with Britain's first online auction site for IT courses. To be more specific, the auctions are for last-minute unsold seats in technical training courses.

This time-distressed inventory sales model, pioneered by lastminute.com, looks very suitable when applied to IT training. However there are quality issues concerning coursework and teaching which simply do not apply to buying air tickets- except that is if you're buying from Korean Airlines or anything that used to be owned by Aeroflot.

Hoora.com is addressing this with online kiosks providing "detailed information on the vendors and programs up for bid helping participants assess the credibility and content of the courses".

Also there is a quality control comfort zone with the participation of well known technical training firms such as Interquad and Aris Training in sellin seats through Hoora.

Hoora's site also features automated travel and accommodation assistance and a late hotel booking service.

This business could well be a goer - it will however have to generate a hefty whack in commissions if it is to meet the monthly payments commanded by Fairmarket, the white-label auction site developer, which is handling Hoora's technology back office.

Update

Perhaps Fairmarket, or Hoora would like to address a browser issue or two, especially as it's techies what will be doing the buying. You can't see the site at all if use Netscape on BSD, a reader writes -- you get a rather unexciting blank page.All the HTML is there of course, its just that nothing is visible. Perhaps it's IE specific to ensure a good "experience.
®

Requirements Checklist for Choosing a Cloud Backup and Recovery Service Provider

Send Corrections