Amar Latif and Traveleyes

He Walk By Faith and Not By Sight!

Amar Latif (born December 4th 1974) is a blind entrepreneur, television actor, director, motivational speaker and world traveller.

Traveleyes is an amazing business, not because it is groundbreaking, not because its founder is blind, but because it makes money by transforming customers’ lives.

On paper, Amar Latif has been dealt a losing hand. Diagnosed early in life with an incurable eye condition (Retinitis Pigmentosa) he was 95 per cent blind by the time he was 20.

Two-thirds of blind people are unemployed…

Fast forward 13 years and you’d expect most people to be struggling on, getting by, making the most of a debilitated life (two-thirds of blind people are unemployed). Not so Latif, who achieved more than most sighted people could in three lifetimes.

He’s a film director, actor, musician, unquenchable traveller, motivational speaker and, (most relevant to this article) an accomplished entrepreneur. His business is Traveleyes, a tour operator catering for blind and sighted holidaymakers who travel in groups, the sighted tourists assisting the non-sighted ones.

“From a blind person’s perspective it is independent travel where you don’t have to rely on family or a charity. For sighted people it’s a very fulfilling experience and a chance to meet new people,” says Latif.

He started the business in April 2004, motivated by his desire to travel without feeling like a charity case or being mothered by ‘carers’. “I knew there were so many interesting destinations out there, but a service like mine didn’t exist, so I thought ‘invent it yourself or go without – Latif’.”

Traveleyes

Amar is the founder and director of Traveleyes, the world’s first commercial international air tour operator company to specialise in serving blind as well as sighted travellers. In founding this ground-breaking enterprise, he set out to challenge the assumption that visually impaired travellers should ever have to accept restrictions on their world travel aspirations. He often personally fulfils the role of world tour-guide.

But it’s not all about blind folk. Latif plays up the personal development and team-building dimensions of the service, which benefit the guides. He says there’s growing interest from corporate clients who use Traveleyes as a fun way to build their sighted employees’ empathy and interpersonal skills.

Leap of faith…

Like most fledgling entrepreneurs Latif was coy about starting up. A successful accountant working for blue chip companies, he describes making the leap to self employment like jumping from a cruise liner into a dingy.
The initial idea for the business came in 2002. To check if it worked in principle, Latif booked a holiday and paid for a sighted person he barely knew to accompany him. “I was the driving force behind the research, I subsidised the trip and it work really well, we both had a good time”

I ask if he looked for grants at the beginning. A socially responsible business like Traveleyes should qualify for a government subsidies and incentives, but Latif says this was not the case.
“You would think we’d qualify for grant, but you go to Business Link and they say your postcode doesn’t fit or ‘we’re not handing out to the travel industry’, so we didn’t spend much time looking around for help from the government.”

Traveleyes’ template for a good time has seen the business grow at around 150 per cent each year since launch and targets have been set for turnover to breach the £8m mark in 2012.

Beyond Boundaries

To perpetuate this mushrooming of the business, Latif has mastered marketing and PR, though he admits that being blind has helped him grab the headlines, especially when he risks his life for TV.

Latif became known to millions through his appearance on BBC Two’s Beyond Boundaries, in which he underwent a gruelling 220 mile trek across Nicaragua, negotiating rivers, volcanoes and man-eating wildlife.

All this activity earned him a clutch of awards, and more great PR. The Junior Chamber International awarded – which in the past dished out awards to people like John F Kennedy, Elvis Presley and Orson Welles – named him the ‘outstanding young entrepreneur of the world’; praise indeed.

In 2007, he was presented with the inaugural Stelios Disabled Entrepreneur Award. This award is presented by EasyJet founder Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou in partnership with the charity Leonard Cheshire Disability.

Amar’s other awards include the 2005 ‘Outstanding Young Business Entrepreneur of the World’ and ‘Outstanding Young Person of the UK’, both awarded by the Chamber of Commerce International (JCI), the 2006 One Vision Man of the Year, and the University of Strathclyde’s 2006 Alumnus of the Year award

“What’s Your Excuse?”…