DUBAI: A Saudi student was selected this week by a jury committee of Dubai Summer Surprises (DSS) to represent Saudi Arabia at the sixth edition of the highly coveted DSS Apprenticeship Program 2011. Mansour Al-Ammar, a third year student at King Saud University, was chosen for the two-week internship program which targets students from the Middle East and North Africa to work on the region's biggest summer tourism extravaganza. “As Chief Marketing Officer for DSS I would create a strategy to bring more corporate sponsors on board to increase the visibility of DSS amongst all target audiences, while simultaneously increasing revenue for them,” said Al-Ammar. Prof. Ahmed Alaamer, Dean of the College of Business Administration at King Saud University, said Al-Ammar will improve his skills with this opportunity. The news was announced by the Dubai Events and Promotions Establishment (DEPE), an agency of the Department of Economic Development (DED) and organizers of DSS this week. “We are pleased to include Mansour from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in this year's batch of apprentices. His unique perspective on the offerings of DSS to our visitors shows great promise, and I am sure he will benefit greatly from working alongside our team of champions,” said Laila Suhail, CEO of DEPE. Participating countries this year include the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria and, for the first time, Palestine. The program started in 2006 when it included four participating universities from two countries. This year, 55 universities from across 11 markets in the Middle East and North Africa were invited to nominate candidates to undergo a highly competitive selection process to earn one of the slots. The internship was set up to give winners the opportunity to build valuable corporate skills and gain exposure to best practices in business administration, marketing and events management by training alongside talented experts who have been responsible for putting DSS together over the last 13 years. The winning apprentices were selected based on essays they produced on promoting DSS as the Chief Marketing Officer.
