Eden Garcia Hipos, one of the pioneering staff of Travel Wide, started her career with Travel Wide on 01 April 1973. She started as an Accounting Clerk. In 1975 she became a Cashier, turned Senior Accountant in 1976, to Accounting Supervisor in 1978, after a year she became the Manager for Admin/Finance. At present she is the Manager for Finance/MIS.

They were only two staff in Accounting when she was hired by TWASP. After a year, two more were added in the department and that was the time she got her promotion. At first she was in charge of the ticket sales reports. Things were very different before as everything were done manually. Recording the ticket sales reports on worksheets manually, transferring them on a Sales Report format using a typewriter, sending manually prepared statements of accounts to clients and doing collections and recording all payments to subsidiary ledgers (can you imagine all those handwritten reports?).

She saw TWASP from 16-staff company in 1973 till it reached more than a hundred in 1994.From one airline principal, it has grown to have several airline principals, cargo and the cruises. She was there while TWASP was trying to keep up with the fast-changing technology. From a manually-run accounting department, to the improved computerized system and now to a more sophisticated system and still upgrading to updated versions.

She has a lot of memorable experiences with Travel Wide, both sad and happy. One experience she cannot forget was when the Gulf War in the Middle East happened in 1991. The company was very much affected by the incident which resulted to retrenchment of almost half of the company’s workforce. She was then in charge of Personnel who took the role of talking to each employee. It really broke her heart.

She treats Travel Wide as her second home and the management and staff as her second family. No doubt about that as she chose to stay for 35 years enjoying her work in the company of her colleagues.

Finally, this is what she has to say: Though the years, I have been humbled by the lessons learned in leadership, by confrontation and reconciliation and most of all the unqualified support and camaraderie of peers.