Mark meets Amar Latif
Recently Talk Directs Marks Skelton was invited to meet Amar Latif at his company Traveleyes’ head office in Leeds.
Mark had been keen to meet Amar for quite some time as his story so far in life is really quite amazing. Even though Amar is blind, his determination in carving out a remarkable career is a story he wanted to hear.
His early background was in finance and Amar spent several years working for BT Cellnet. In 2005 he left to start up his own company, which is called Traveleyes. Traveleyes is a company which specialises in holidays for the visually impaired, where a blind person is paired up with a different sighted person each day. These sighted guides act as the eyes for blind travellers by guiding and describing the sights, in return for a substantial discount on their travel costs. Amar found a gap in the market after noticing that no major holiday company was offering any truly specialist vacations.
Amar told Mark that these holidays are proving really successful, this year he is celebrating the 10 year anniversary of Traveleyes. He also said that 95% of customers who have been on holiday with Traveleyes have returned and used the company again. The holiday destinations have included New York, Vegas and Amar’s personal favourite, Cuba.
Amar’s outstanding career so far has seen him scoop some great awards including, ‘The Outstanding Young Business Entrepreneur of the World’ from the Chamber of Commerce International , which has also previously been won by U.S. Presidents John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton. Also, Amar was presented the 'Stelios Disabled Entrepreneur Award', by Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou of Easy Jet.
One of the most fascinating things about Amar was watching a BBC 2 TV programme he took part in named ‘Beyond Boundaries’ where he and fellow disabled people took part in a never attempted before, trek across Nicaragua, from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast. Due to the nature of the places they were crossing, Amar needed protection from fully armed soldiers, as if making this crossing with disabilities wasn’t difficult enough! Amar has also played parts in TV, played music, speaks to a variety of audiences, and fundraises for charity.
