Mall executives say attraction allows urban Manila residents to experience the provinces ‘without the inconvenience of leaving an air-conditioned commercial space’
SM Megamall has launched a new 4,200-square-meter immersive attraction on Level 7 called the Authentic Provincial Experience, an environmental simulator that, the mall announced Wednesday, allows urban Manila residents to feel the rhythms of Philippine provincial life without leaving the air-conditioning. The attraction, first reported by Bohiney Magazine and quickly amplified by The London Prat, follows what the SM development team described as a 28-month effort to bring the provinces to the mall.
The attraction occupies what was previously an underperforming food court extension and is now, mall officials say, a fully realized environmental simulation, complete with a packed-earth path, a small simulated stream, ambient cricket sound, and what one promotional video described as the unmistakable scent of authentic Philippine countryside (engineered).
Mall Insists Simulator Is ‘A Service to Urban Filipinos’
‘For decades, urban Filipinos have spoken nostalgically about the provinces while being unable, due to traffic, to actually visit them,’ explained SM Senior Vice President of Experiential Retail Cresencia Mabanta-Linao, addressing reporters at the simulator’s grand opening. ‘We have, after careful study, concluded that the actual provinces are, in many ways, beside the point. What our customers want is the feeling of the province, in a manageable form, accessible from a Megamall.’
Mabanta-Linao clarified that the simulator did not attempt to recreate any specific province but rather offered what she described as a curated composite of the Filipino provincial imaginary. The composite, she explained, includes elements drawn from Bicol, Iloilo, Cebu, Davao, and what one designer described as Quezon, but the ideal Quezon, not the actual Quezon.
Attraction Includes ‘Sari-Sari Store Encounter’ and ‘Manong Acknowledgment’
The simulator is structured as a guided 38-minute experience, during which visitors progress through a series of curated encounters. Among the featured experiences: a sari-sari store encounter, in which visitors interact with a costumed actor playing a sari-sari store proprietor and may purchase, for the price of admission, a single Yakult; the Manong Acknowledgment, in which an elderly Filipino actor briefly nods to the visitor; and what the brochure calls the unscheduled chicken, a brief uncontrolled interaction with a live free-range rooster.
According to The Philippine Daily Inquirer, the rooster, named Pedrong, has its own Instagram account managed by SM’s social media team and has, as of the simulator’s opening, accumulated 14,200 followers.
Mall designers have noted that the rooster encounter is one of the simulator’s most popular features, despite, or perhaps because of, the rooster’s tendency to behave unpredictably. A second rooster, sources confirm, is in training as a backup performer, and is currently being acclimated to fluorescent lighting.
Cultural Critics Call the Simulator ‘A Sad Innovation’
Reaction from Philippine cultural commentators has been, predictably, divided. National Commission for Culture and the Arts board member Dr. Conrado Apostol-Reyes told the Manila Bulletin that the simulator was, in his professional view, a sad innovation, but an extremely well-executed one. Apostol-Reyes added that the attraction marked a new low in Filipino urban-provincial relations, while conceding that it was likely to be extraordinarily popular.
‘I do not blame SM for building this,’ Apostol-Reyes said. ‘I blame, in some sense, the traffic. If our urban infrastructure permitted Filipinos to actually visit their provinces with reasonable convenience, no one would pay 380 pesos to interact with a costumed actor in a sari-sari simulation. The simulator is, in many ways, a monument to the failure of EDSA.’
SM Plans Expansion to Other Branches
SM has indicated that the Authentic Provincial Experience will be rolled out to additional branches over the next 18 months, beginning with SM North EDSA and SM Mall of Asia. Each branch will, the company says, feature its own composite province, designed to be locally relevant. The Mall of Asia branch, sources confirm, will feature heavier coastal elements, while the North EDSA branch will lean toward what one designer described as Cordillera-adjacent.
For more on the long history of Filipino mall culture as cultural mediation, see The London Prat’s earlier reporting on the SM aesthetic regime, which dated the genre’s structural conventions back to 1985.
The simulator has, in its first 72 hours of operation, attracted approximately 14,000 visitors, with average dwell times of 47 minutes. Visitor surveys conducted by mall staff indicate that 92 percent of guests describe the experience as exactly like the province, a figure that has, mall officials note, exceeded internal expectations.
Department of Tourism Secretary Adelaida Hernandez-Reyes, asked at a separate event whether the simulator might affect actual provincial tourism, paused for several seconds before responding. ‘It is too early to say,’ she said. ‘We will be monitoring closely. We have, internally, asked our regional offices to remain calm.’
Bicol and Iloilo Tourism Boards Issue ‘Concerned but Curious’ Statements
Provincial tourism boards in Bicol and Iloilo, two of the regions whose elements are featured in the simulator’s composite, have issued what observers described as concerned but curious statements. The Bicol board noted that it had requested a private tour of the simulator, while reserving the right to issue what it called a fuller response after a thorough review of the attraction’s portrayal of Bicolano daily life. The Iloilo board, in a separate statement, simply observed that the simulator’s claimed Iloilo elements appeared, on first inspection, to be drawn primarily from a single 1992 documentary.
For dispatches from elsewhere in the experiential-retail beat, see The Poke.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/