The once most popular hotel in Arusha City, the Impala which went out of operation and remained closed for over seven years, is being renovated ready for another lease of life.
Reports say, the Impala has been bought off by another investor who is renovating the buildings that had been overgrown with shrubs, moss and relegated into concrete ruins.
The Impala, owned by the former real estate mogul in the Northern Tanzania, the late Awio Meleu Mrema, operated from the junction of Nyerere, Mandela and Simeon Roads, adjacent to the roundabout connecting Njiro, Kijenge, Philips and the Arusha City Center.
The fall of the hotel was marked with the death of its previous owner, Meleu Mrema who passed away in 2017.
However, it is now official that ​the Dodoma based transporter​ and Member of Parliament, Ahmed Shabiby who operates the Shabiby buses has bought the hotel and is refurbishing it ready for business starting anytime in the course of 2025.
In addition to running buses that ply between Dodoma, Morogoro, Arusha and Dar-es-salaam, Shabiby also operates a chain of hotels known as Morena.
Morena hotels have properties in Dodoma and Morogoro and now it seems the establishment is expanding to Arusha with the purchase of Impala Hotel.
Impala was one of the very few privately owned hotels in Arusha, when it opened for service in 1993, that was long before other properties such as the Kibo Palace, the Palace Hotel, Corridor Springs and Gran Melia came into being.
The Impala Hotel’s main selling point was the variety of dedicated restaurants catering for Indian Cuisine, Chinese Food and Continental Dishes, in addition to more than 170 modestly priced rooms, a swimming pool, plus an artificial waterfall doubling as outdoor public shower.
The hotel offered 177 well-furnished en-suite rooms, Conference Halls, Boardrooms and a choice of onsite restaurants. Providing solutions across the entire spectrum of Tourism, Accommodation, Events and Business.
For years it served as a gateway to all tourist attractions such as Serengeti, Ngorongoro Crater, Lake Manyara, Tarangire and Mount Kilimanjaro.
The Impala Hotels Group later yielded other properties such as the sky-scraping Naura Springs Hotel at the Sanawari and the massive Ngurdoto Hotel at Momella near the Arusha National Park.
Tripadvisor gave the hotel 3 out of 5 ratings from a total of 315 reviewers.
They would also establish ‘Impala shuttles,’ comprising a fleet of minibuses plying between Arusha and Nairobi City of Kenya.
It is still not known if the new owner will retain the ‘Impala’ trademark or baptize the property with his own ‘Morena’ title once the hotel reopens for business.