The Vision City Shopping Mall is the biggest shopping center in Port Moresby. It popularly known as VC by city residents. It is centrally located in the Waigani area where all the major hotels, government offices, the Supreme Court and the National Parliament building. It started as a shopping center only but later the owners, Malaysian Corporation Rimijan Hijau (RH) group of companies, added a five star Stanley Hotel to it, making it an iconic landmark in the city.
Shops inside the Vision City Shopping Mall
The mall is three floors high. The basement is used as fee paying parking lot. The biggest supermarket inside is owned by RH itself on the first floor and rest is rented out to various retails outlets and other businesses. Almost all the other major retail companies in Papua New Guinea have have an outlet inside the mall. Popular companies includes Brian Bell Group of companies, CPL City Pharmacy, CHM Group of Companies, Trophy Haus, FoneHaus, Daltron Consumer Electronics, Telikom PNG, Digicel, Trends Beauty, Post PNG, PNG Air and Jacks of PNG.
The others are specialty shops. The first floor also has local boutique stalls selling local artifacts and crafts. The stalls are not permanent and changes quite often. There is a Food Court on end of the first floor and few good restaurants. The biggest restaurant is Dynasty Restaurant and is on the second floor.
ATMS and Banking Services.
All the three retail banks in the country, Westpac, Kina Bank, and Bank South Pacific (BSP) have ATM machines in the mall. Five (5) BSP and three (3) Kina Bank ATMs. All ATMs are located on first floor and two (2) on the basement, next to the entrance from the underground parking lot. Westpac Bank has only one ATM which is on the basement. Use the basement ATMS or underground car park, take the short Escalator from the first floor.
ATMs in PNG does accept some of the international Debit/Credit Cards and signs are posted beside the ATMs showing the cards that are accepted. For visitors who wish to exchange foreign currency, there is a Currency Exchange shop on the 2nd floor.
Kina Bank has a branch inside the mall and it is open both on working days and on weekends as well which is very convenient for the public.
Toilets facilities
There are two toilet facilities. They are located on the first and second floor. Vision City shopping mall is the only city mall which has public toilet facilities. All other public areas like shopping malls, bus stops, banks, and etc in the city has no public toilets. Toilet use is not free though, it costs K2.00 per entry to use it. This is quite cheap in terms of convenience for the public and the cost of maintaining it. The toilet facilities are well kept and value for the K2.00. It maybe surprising for visitors though to pay to use toilets in a shopping mall.
Security inside the mall
The mall is guarded by security guards from private security firms. There is no public police office inside the mall. There are CTV Cameras in almost all the shops and public areas of the whole mall. However, there are no CTV signage in the shops, like it would in shopping malls or shops in other countries or cities.
Also note that general Mall staff are not visible and there is General Information Help desk to ask for information or assistance in case of emergency.
PNG’s official language is English so for visitors who don’t speak English, can be a problem if there is no one to translate for them.
Transport Access to and from the mall.
Visitors can easily access the mall by public bus service, taxi or private vehicles as it’s located in a central area. A lot of local Taxi companies have allocated Taxi parking lots in the main car park area, and visitors can easily take a taxi. For visitors, the public city bus is unreliable. It doesn’t run on time schedule and bus stops are only main roads. Therefore, it is important that visitors take the Taxi. Otherwise, go with a local who can act as guide or go with friends in private vehicles.
Vision City Shopping Mall location map
