Amar Latif and Traveleyes: Inspiration incarnate
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. Dan Matthews talks to Traveleyes’ Amar Latif, Britain’s most inspiring entrepreneur.
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.
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 with a smile.
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 relates his customers’ inspirational stories of forging strong friendships over the course of a couple of weeks, and of visually impaired people’s lives literally being transformed for the better.
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.
There’s a cost benefit for travellers too. The holiday market is tight at the best of times and even with his unique proposition, Latif keeps outgoings to a minimum. He passes savings to sighted customers (who can get up to 40 per cent off) while charging ‘about the market rate’ to his blind customers.
And make no mistake: these are not bland trips to the coast; recent excursions include Cuba, Tuscany, Sorrento, Iceland and Canada. Each trip involves around 20 people, and during the course of the holiday each sighted person buddies up with each blind person, giving ample opportunities to make new pals.
“It’s a truly diverse international group, which makes for a real learning experience. We’re doing about 20 trips a year and I manage to attend around 60 per cent of them. That figure will shrink as the business grows, but it helps to remind me why the business is so worthwhile.”
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.
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.
His willingness to put life and limb on the line for his brand is Branson (or Gosling)-like, but he maintains it is vital to his business. Other less life-threatening TV work has included acting parts in comedies for BBC’s One and Three, as well as directing documentaries for Channel Four.
“In the beginning it was important to see that Traveleyes’ concept worked and that we could provide a high-quality
service without losing money,” recalls Latif. “Now we’ve achieved that consistently PR has become the most important thing.
“We have to raise awareness of our brand but also the big concept, which is new. It’s an interesting basis for a business so TV, newspapers and magazines are fascinated. A combination of my own activities in documentaries also gave Traveleyes good exposure.”
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.
So what’s next for Latif? Is it only a matter of time before he loses interest in his business and turns his attention to something else? “We’re growing at a fantastic rate and we have big plans for the future. More and more people are hearing about Traveleyes, so there’s no time to get bored. I’m in this for the long term,” he assures me.
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