GNV Reviews 

messages and found a strange one: our ferry had been cancelled, and instead we should travel from Palermo to Naples, two hours earlier. Check-in at 22:00 instead of 00:30. The message had only arrived at 20:00. By the time we read it, it was 21:50.

So we left the restaurant in a hurry. The hotline listed in the message was no longer staffed at that hour, which meant we did not even know for certain whether we were now departing from Palermo or from Termini - and whether we would get on the boat at all. We had to find that information ourselves.

Once we arrived at the port - after an enormous queue - it eventually became clear: we would be allowed on board (the alternative would have been a ferry roughly a week later, since everything was sold out), but our cabin did not exist. Having booked and counted on a cabin, we had no pillows, no blanket, no sleeping mat, not even towels and had to sit and lie on the filthy carpeted floor. This was shortly after I had watched a dog relieve itself on that same carpet in the foyer, with the mess simply scooped up with a dustpan.

I understand that operational problems happen. But reading through the reviews, this is not a one-off — it is a pattern. What I would have expected:

- Better communication in advance. Nothing in the app, nothing by email. Only a text message sent two hours before check-in, and a fairly cryptic one at that.
- A basic apology. I understand that staff have to deal with hundreds of people and reach their limits. A simple "we are very sorry" would have gone a long way.
- Proactive care for stranded passengers. In the end I had to ask around and beg for a blanket so I wouldn't have to sleep face-down on a dirty carpet. In a situation like this, after paying €600 plus additional costs and inconvenience (driving to Naples instead of Rome), I would expect passengers to be offered at least a small towel and a blanket without having to ask.
- a refund process that GNV initiates. Instead, we now have to chase the partial refund ourselves - on board we were simply pointed to an online form on the website.

And the fact that we now have to drive five hours instead of two and a half, on one hour of „sleep“, is not something money can compensate for. We can only hope we arrive safely despite the exhaustion.

It was a less than mediocre experience. Except for one waiter in the à la carte dining room, the staff on board were far superior to anything else to do with the experience.

Our boarding staff were uninformed and gave incorrect information and instructions. The food is basic cafeteria, our premium suite was close enough to hear the evening’s entertainment with out attending the event. The entertainment went to midnight each night.

If we had not by chance acquainted with a regular passenger while disembarking we would have roamed the terminal for hours.

We had hoped for a novel experience traveling from Italy to Tangier across the Mediterranean - it was not as expected.

Tot ha estat correcte, i be. El personal amable. Lo unic, que falta endolls per carregar movils al ferry, i les butaques per dormir, una mica incomodes.

I was used to travel with Tirrenia. This is the first time I travelled with GNV and it was a disaster. They changed 2 times the onboarding time for the outward journey and 1 time for the return journey, moving the departure from 21:00 to 23:59. The onboarding process, especially if you have a car is just incredible. They pack the cars in a way that there is no room between the cars. This means that in the morning you have to wait that the cars around yours leave before being able to even enter your car. The adjective that better summarizes the company is disorganized.

One of the worst travel experiences I ever had. Very messy boarding, late arrival, rude and incompetent staff

service needs serious attention**

We took this ferry from Tunis to Genoa and while the idea of the trip was great, the actual experience left a lot to be desired.

**Cabin:Our suite door was jammed and needed real force to open or close — not a minor sticky-door issue, but something that felt unsafe to leave to chance with kids around. The furniture near the mini-fridge was broken and lying on the floor. My brother-in-law found bugs in his cabin. The carpets throughout felt dirty.

**Check-in in Genoa: This was genuinely the worst part. We waited for hours in a hot, overcrowded room with no real organization. Getting out afterward meant walking young kids through an active parking lot with cars maneuvering around us — that shouldn't happen at a passenger terminal.

**Onboard: Simple things like buying a coffee meant lines of 20+ minutes. The food was underwhelming for the price of the trip.

**The bigger picture: A lot of passengers on this route are Tunisians living in France, Italy, and elsewhere who rely on this ferry because it's often the only practical option. It felt like the company knows this and doesn't feel pressure to improve, because people will keep booking regardless of complaints.

We hoped for a comfortable crossing and instead spent much of it dealing with avoidable problems. If you're considering this route, go in with your expectations managed — and push back if you experience anything unsafe.

Everything is good on the ferry, the cabin is ok with clean sheets. But on the port of Bari is not well indicated. And passengers by foot take the same entry and exit as vehicles, which is not quit safe.

First of all when we wanted to go to sleep there was cigarette smoke coming through our air conditioning in our cabin so when I went to reception to report it they just sent someone to show me how to close the air conditioning. The ship is non smoking inside and is a fire hazard to do so of which I explained to reception but they did not seem to care about the health and safety of the passengers.
Then being woke up by cleaners 2 hours before we docked banging on our doors and shouting like we are prisoners in a cell. We were treated like cattle not paying humans trying to enjoy a holiday. Very poorly unorganised and terrible customer service. I hope an inspector of health and safety travels on the ship so they can be caught and fined for allowing people to smoke in there cabins. I could go on as there were many things but I have pointed out the most important and five future travellers what they can expect.

Very disappointing experience with GNV from Durres to Bari. We paid for a Premium Suite for our family with small children, but shortly before departure GNV downgraded us to a tiny four-bed cabin due to a vessel change. We were told to claim the price difference afterwards.

We also had to wait three hours at Durrës port before boarding, from 20:00 to 23:00, with our small children.

It has now been 12 days since our claim, with no refund and not even a reply. Very poor customer service. We hope GNV resolves this, and will update the review if they do.

The website is awful, booking or changing a booking is impossible, every second click results in an error message. I'd rather swim as booking GNV again.

I had a great journey from Bari to Durres. Boarding in Bari is a bit confusing but reading everyone's instructions online made it very doable. Passport control also takes very long in Bari but everyone got onto the boat on time. If you expect night train quality, the rooms are pretty nice and I could even take a shower after a hot day. Don't expect it to be as clean as a hotel but my bed was clean and I had a great night of sleep. The staff was also friendly.

Im sick of this schedule as I had to wait four hours or more to go on the ferrie.At Dover it only took us 15 minutes and we were on the ferrie to calais but this is company needs to face a inspection.This is sick and rude

The toilets were already an imposition. I could not use the toilets for 8 hours because they were absolutely unhygienic and dirty. These were not cleaned even despite the request. Unfortunately a not so nice experience. In addition, security is also questionable. Outside, a screw was loose on the railing.

1 of my super shitty experiences with this Company:
First they let us wait 3 hours in scorching hot sun in the cars in front of the ferry.Then they tell us the little cars go in last so that we can exit first on arrival. After hours of waiting we can drive in. And again hours of waiting just to depart from Port Durres. 3 hours delay. On arrival wich is also 3 hours late we get told that they have problems with open the ramp to drive out. And only the big cars wich entered first can drive out. After 4 hours of still waiting for the ramp to
function we went to ask what the problem is. They get workers from Napoli wich drive 2-3 hours to bari to come fix the ramp. What a 3.World country.And for the hours of wait we get a water wich tastes like from the toilette as compensation. What a unprofessional company. You are better of swimming the ocean yourself than going on GNV.
(update: After six hours waiting for the technician still nothing showed up)

The ferry trip from hell.
I had the idea to take e ferry from Palermo to Genova, since I live in Siciliy, but needed to drive to Sweden, and 20 hour ferry a part of the way would probably be a nice and relaxed experience. How I got be so perfectly wrong...
When booking the trip, everything looked great, the ferry would depart at 21.00 and arrive at Genova 17.00 the day after. When driving towards Palermo from Siracusa where I live, we got a text message saying that due to wheather conditions the ferry would be delayed for an hour, so the new departure time would be 22.00 and the arrvial would be delayed the same amount of time. Fine, I thought for myself, nice to get a heads up. No worries, we have time to get to our hotel in time in Verona. When we get to the port in Palermo, it is clear that no one knows what to do. The booking confirmation told us to get to the ticket office in the port, but the guards guarding the port say that we cant get in without a ticket. After some time apolpgizing for being stupid tourists, showing them our reservation stating that we need to collect our tickets inside the port ticket office, without them understanding a word in our reservation notice, we manage to get inside the port area and go to the ticket office. Well in there, nobody understood anything, but thanks to googe translate and some flirting I got the ticket. Finally, now the trip would start and be that relaxing experience we longed for. When cueing up to embark the ferry, nothing made sence. We stood in the cue together with other travellers, no one understanding when or how we would embark. At oclock we finally started moving in to the ferry, and then propbably the most strange thing happened. The people in charge of loading the cars started to order people to park the cars in different directions, for no reason whatsoever, screaming to people to drive one way, and then another way, screaming different orders to people so no one understood what the wanted us to do. I have worked in the shipping industry for 16 years and have never seen someone loading a ferry this way. It was utterly stupid and pointless, because when we was getting of the ferry again, we needed to reverse, back up, and change the direction of cars again!!! Anyway, after getting shouted at from the really rude loading staff, we went to our cabin. Though, not getting any info on how to get keys for our cabins, we where sent to a quest around the ship, asking different people for how to get the keys. After a couple of non exeisting help from staff memebers, some one actualy told ou that we needed to go and look for a "colleague" who will give me a key, where is that colleague then, I asked, somewhere else was the answer. But after a good 15 minutes running around we found the person, we got a key and we found our cabin. Remember this is approximatly 3 hours after we started queing for embarkment, with no possibility to visit a lavatory. Anyway, we tried to find someting to eat, we just wanted to get into bed and sleep off this really unpleasent experience, but of course there were only 1 option when it came to food. So we went to a "restaurant", nad the food was ok, but took ages. When we had eaten and was on our way to bed, this is way after 23:15, the ship started to move. So a good 1.20-1.40 hours delayed after the delay.
After a night sleeping we got wakened by the announcement that the ship was going to do a full scale safety drill. I know that this is something needed to be done, so we coped. Even if this was done under great commotion. But after that we tried to get something to eat, sadly with a sortiment that was mostly like the scetch in Monty Pythons Flying Cirkus, a lot of things to choose from, but everything was out of stock.
3 hours prior to arrival everyone was kicked out from their cabins, but we didnt know it was 3 hours at that time. Because, when asking the staff when we would arrive, we got a specific time, when asking when we would be able to go down to our cars we got the answer, we will tell you. Do you think this time where the correct one? Of course not. 19.45 we were still waiting in our car to start disembark the ferry and wait for the ship to port. And of course in the process of getting of the ferry, we got shouted at from the most stupid loading staff I have ever encountered. Because for some reason we neede to chaneg direction of our car again, together with a lot of other passengers, because GNV obviously have deranged people working with this. Just after 20.00 we hit ground and finally got away from this. That was the best thing with this trip, when it was over. I warn everyone I know for travelling with this company, this has been a proof of how bad a ferry can be handled.
A sidenote, having staff members stated they speak english need them to actually do that.

**Absolutely terrible!** You choose the self-service dining option, only to be served mediocre food with poor quality and very little variety. A very disappointing experience that fell far below expectations. I would not recommend this ferry company.

Very disappointing experience with GNV Blue. I booked a cabin after reading online that the ships had good sound insulation, but my cabin on deck 6 was incredibly noisy. It felt like sleeping next to the engines all night.

The cabin was dusty, parts of the bathroom were rusty, and the overall maintenance was poor. Restaurant service was also slow, with other customers receiving their orders before mine despite ordering later.

I would not travel with GNV again unless significant improvements are made.

It was one mess. Everybody was complaining. All the rooms where dirty. No pillows, no towels, beds not clean. I guarantee most beds most of the time not even get changed 100%.

GNV is famous for cancelling their ferries without providing any option to their customers that they live off of. Their fleet is incredibly dirty, the customer service non-existent. I have used them twice with actually traveling. They cancelled two of my travels and left my plans and my vacation in shambles and my expenses unaccounted for. They do not give you refund if you happen to try to cancel with them. This is the worst ferry company ever and the worst part is that none of them care. DO NOT USE THEM UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.

Two families, interrailing with 4 children (9-14 y o) and 4 adults (big backpacks). Genova - Barcelona.

We weren’t happy with the trip at all. Already finding the right terminal (Terminal Traghetti) in Genova was confusing - unfortunately we also got wrong instructions from the office worker of GNV because he thought we were by car - the right terminal name in our tickets would have also saved us from a lot of hassle. We were unsure of in what order to proceed - a sign of doing the security check first and then the check-in and a map of the area would have been helpful.

Also wandering around the outdoor terminal area was confusing with walking here and there. There were no clear signage. Luckily we met some nice workers helping us in the right directions. In the check-in line there were no instructions for only one of the group to do the check-in but a very unpleasant security officer shouted about this to all of us, also to the children and made them scared.

We found our cabins alright but unfortunately the toilet and shower smelled bad. We asked for a missing pillow and towels but they never were actually delivered. The windows were unclean everywhere, so the beautiful landscapes were almost ruined. The signs that were found on board weren’t otherwise correct and it was disappointing especially for the children that services (arcade, gym, game room etc.) they expected weren’t there.

Maybe one of the most confusing things was the self-service dining with a voucher: in the corridor there were no instructions to guide us what was included in the deal and the small print instructions in the (busy) line were not really accessible (or in a language we could understand, e.g. English was missing). It was really hard to understand what we could take free and what would cost extra - sometimes the workers had time to clear these things up, sometimes not. No signs or prices of the extras were found in the later line.

The worst case was the breakfast: suddenly water was not included, nowhere could we see prices of products that were not included in the meal-deal (and never it was announced in the tickets) and even our 9-year-old could count that 9,90€ for four slices of salami was a robbery. That was the most expensive ”free” breakfast we have ever eaten.

Unfortunately also the web page of the company failed to work so there wasn’t a possibility to check if there was some info of what was included in our meal vouchers - we couldn’t find anything in the general page earlier. Also the workers in the cafeteria and elsewhere seemed frustrated and we got different instructions from different sources and sometimes even from the same workers.

For us travelling with children it would have been crucial to know e.g. the breakfast time but we got three different infos about the time and the correct time was made clear only in the morning.

We were not noticed beforehand that we have to leave the cabins that early, at 7 o’clock. Finding a place to keep the backpacks during the breakfast and later finding a suitable place to wait for the disembarkation with children and big backpacks with no seats was difficult and unpleasant.

The best surprise were the dolphins we saw when leaving Genova and the scenery was beautiful on the way. But, unfortunately when being out, the soot in the condense water from the cruiseship’s chimneys ruined our daughter’s dress.

Luckily, being late for an hour and a half wasn’t critical for us but it was strange that nothing was announced about that.

So, with these annoyances we cannot be happy with the experience and can’t recommend it to anybody.