Hotel History

The New National Hotel, was built in 1950 by an Englishman named Jimmy Taylor.

Captain Parow, a farmer & owner of the land in the area divided up his land into commercial plots.  This spurred on industrialization and companies such as Cape Transvaal Printers aided growth in the surrounding area.  It was at this stage that the New National Hotel started gaining significance.

The Hotel flourished in the 70’s and 80’s by having dances; weddings, parties and even served as meeting venues for various clubs, both social and sporting.  Due to new legislation passed in the hotel industry which stated that one must have a bathroom for every room, many Hoteliers changed ownership as they could not afford this.

The SA Breweries (SAB) took this opportunity to buy various establishments to secure beer outlets.  They renovated all their Hotels according to legislation, and during the process found out that running small establishments via a management team was not successful.  After a short while they sold the hotel to the Marcows brothers.

The Marcows brothers established themselves in the 1970’s to be one of the leading liquor chain stores (Marcows Liquors) by purchasing various Hotels in order to gain liquor licences.  However, in the late 1970’s the bottles store licence and the liquor licence were split in order to establish new bottle stores in Hypermarkets, which were rapidly growing across the country.

This gave the Marcows brothers the chance to sell their hotels, but retain their profitable bottle stores licences.

In February of 1987, a Swiss Hotelier coming from Zimbabwe (Rhodesia) bought the Hotel.  Soon after purchasing the hotel he started with major renovations and 10 new rooms were added above the liquor store.  A function room was built and all the rooms were refurbished.

It was round about this time that the GreenBacks Restaurant (now Lonestar Pub) rose to popularity.  The Restaurant was known for its Million Dollar Steak.

The New National Hotel has outlived many of the Hotels & Pubs along Voortrekker Road.  A landmark in the area its unique combination of entertainment offerings & old world charms has attributed to its success.

Today, the New National Hotel has been repositioned under the stewardship of Young & Vibrant SA.

The Hotel benefited from a major upgrade and repositioning strategy in mid-2015.  It now serves Airport & Business travellers, as well as corporate, sport and leisure groups.