Mayence had taken the job at the store in 1898 after moving to Nairobi with her husband (and step-brother)[3] William Stanley Bent, and their daughter Gladys.

[4] Mayence would bring fresh butter and vegetables from her husband's 40-acre (16 ha) farm in Kikuyu for the hotel's guests.

In 1912, Fred Tate purchased two plots of land and had a new hotel designed by architects Robertson, Gow & Davidson, and built on Delamere Avenue.

In 1926, he and Mayence moved to London,[3][8] leaving the hotel to be run by Albert Ernest Waterman, his wife Florence Annie, and their daughter Ruby.

Fred Tate kept busy with the constant appraisal of the hotel's guests, and the minutiae of things such as the daily menu.

[10] She eventually sold the hotel to Abraham Lazarus Block, a Jewish Lithuanian entrepreneur,[2] in 1947, although she still maintained a financial interest.

One of Block's earliest business transactions in Nairobi was a deal with Mayence Bent involving having new mattresses sewn for the Victoria Hotel.

Seeing that living in London "was taking him nowhere",[12] he soon followed his father, who had fled to South Africa, and later fought in the Second Boer War.

Block, convinced that Kenya was a "New Zion" for Jews, travelled to Nairobi via the Post steamer Feldmarschall and overland by train.

He hired R. A. de Souza to sew covers, hired labourers who were loitering around Tommy Wood's general store to stuff them with residual grass which had been previously cut for railroad clearing, and, when stronger needles were needed to sew the heavy cloth, constructed them from bicycle spokes.

[15] There are nine meeting and conference rooms with audio-visual equipment, including a 227-square-metre (2,440 sq ft) ballroom, and a business center with computers, fax, photocopier, and secretarial services.

[16] The Sarova Stanley has a heated rooftop swimming pool, as well as a health club with a sauna and steambath.

[16] The Sarova Stanley's food offerings have come a long way since May Bent served vegetables and butter from her husband's farm.

[5] The hotel is known for having hosted conferences between world leaders,[13] authors, and film actors, including Ernest Hemingway,[26][27] Winston Churchill, Clark Gable, Ava Gardner, Grace Kelly,[28] Gregory Peck, Michael Caine, Sean Connery, and Frank Sinatra.

[29] In 1952, the then Princess Elizabeth visited the hotel as part of a world tour, shortly before the death of her father, King George VI, and her subsequent succession as Queen of the United Kingdom and Head of the Commonwealth.

Hemingway mentions the Stanley in these works, and is also credited with introducing the word "safari" to the English language.

[35] Elspeth Huxley, author of The Flame Trees of Thika, The Mottled Lizard, Red Strangers, and other books, frequented the Stanley Hotel and used it as a setting for several of her works.

In 1947, it was adapted into The Macomber Affair, a film starring Gregory Peck and Joan Bennett, which was shot at the hotel.