New Safari Hotel (1967) Ltd, formerly known as Safari Hotel, was built in 1935 for Gladys and Margot Rydon, two English sister owning coffee estates in Tanganyika. After the unification of Tanganyika and Zanzibar into modern – day Tanzania in 1964 and Arusha Declaration in 1967.

1967, the Safari Hotel was nationalised, as were many banks and large industries at that time, and handed to the National Housing Corporation. The Hotel was subsequently sold to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania, who added the new to the name and set up the New Safari Hotel (1967) Ltd which acquired its ownership in 2002.

Another noted landmark addition to Arusha in the late 1930’s was the “Safari House” “Newer and fancier than the other Hotels in Arusha, lovely grounds and the old-world charm of its rival.” However, it was masterfully managed by an Englishman, Ben Benbow, who was on a first name basis with every white hunter as well as celebrity actors such as Robert Taylor, John Wayne and Harry Kruger that visited and stayed, during the filming of “HATARI,, in 1961.The place had a beautiful copper bar and “the walls were decorated with framed and signed photographs of white hunters with their clients and trophies.”