GEISHA ALON­ZO

Am­ral Khan, founder of Am­ral’s Trav­el and a well known steel­band im­pre­sario, has died.

Khan cre­at­ed one of the most pop­u­lar trav­el agen­cies in the coun­try, mak­ing his mark as an ex­em­plary busi­ness­man. He lat­er sold the busi­ness but em­ploy­ees through­out the agency yes­ter­day re­mem­bered him as a kind man with a keen busi­ness sense.

Am­ral’s agency was rev­o­lu­tion­ary in the trav­el busi­ness when it first opened for busi­ness in 1967.

In prepa­ra­tion for this, Khan and his wife had spent a decade trav­el­ling to more than 100 coun­tries study­ing the var­i­ous as­pects of trav­el, in­clud­ing ho­tel ac­com­mo­da­tions and con­duct­ed tours.

In ad­di­tion to es­tab­lish­ing a “trav­el ser­vice with a dif­fer­ence,” Khan led ten steel­bands—in­clud­ing four on­sored by Sin­ga­pore Air­lines—to al­most every cor­ner of the world for 11 years, per­form­ing to over one bil­lion peo­ple.

Pan Trin­ba­go’s Richard Forteau, when told the news ex­pressed shock at Khan’s pass­ing.

“It’s a big loss to the steel­pan in­dus­try . . . first we lost Ken pro­fes­sor Philmore and now Am­ral Khan,” he said. “It’s re­al­ly shock­ing news. Mr Khan was a pi­o­neer. He had a lot of love for pan and all that it brought with it.

“He was re­al­ly a pi­o­neer in the in­dus­try and his tal­ent and knowl­edge played an in­stru­men­tal part in shap­ing it and we will al­ways be thank­ful for that. This is tru­ly sad news.”

Forteau re­called that Am­ral’s Trinidad Cav­a­liers steel­band did a mem­o­rable tour of East Africa and In­dia.

“Am­ral Khan took the world by storm through his love for steel­band and he was in­stru­men­tal in mar­ket­ing the in­stru­ment on an in­ter­na­tion­al lev­el. He did it love and with pride,” he said.

Khan’s last ac­tive steel­band in­volve­ment was as vice chair­man of the World Steel­band Fes­ti­val 2000, which at­tract­ed steel­bands from Eng­land, Swe­den, Nor­way, the Unit­ed States and the Caribbean.

In 1978 he wrote a 375-page au­to­bi­og­ra­phy.