The Night Before, Ranked

Your three best hotels, live

Change any answer and the picks change with it. They’re built from the same published facts as the ranking below. Nobody pays to be here.

Your night before, worked out

Five answers, and the page builds the whole thing: the hotel, the ride in, the ride to the ship, what happens to the car, what time to leave, and how you get home. Every figure is one the hotel, the port or the company publishes. Where nobody publishes a number, you’ll see that instead of a guess.

Partner links (transfers, rental cars) may earn Seabound Journeys a commission at no extra cost to you. They don't change the plan, which is built only from what each company publishes.

The top three

The top two sit in Marina Romea, the village on the terminal’s own bank, about 1.7 road miles out by our routing, and both list free breakfast and parking. The Columbia edges ahead because its own site has a page for cruise passengers. Hotel Diana, in the old town, is third for the same reason — both pages point you to Visit Ravenna’s transfer.

The twelve, in order

Narrow the twelve by what your night needs. Save the ones you like, or tick up to three to compare side by side — the order is ours, the shortlist is yours.

Why twelve, not twenty? We checked 17 hotels from Marina Romea to Bologna, and twelve were open and published enough to score. Every hotel we left out is in the not-ranked list with its reason.

A word on sources. Five old-town hotels are read from their own websites, NH and Starhotels from their brands, and Mitico from Bologna Welcome, the city’s tourism board. The four seaside hotels have no site we could find, so their facts come from Expedia listings. A listing is the booking site’s summary, not the hotel’s promise — every page says which is which.

From the airport to the hotel, then on to the ship

Pick how you’re arriving. The board counts what each hotel publishes, the table lights up that column, and the companies below run from the airport to the port.

How far each pick sits from the terminal

Every distance here ends at a street point on Via Molo Gaetano Sanfilippo, on the Porto Corsini bank where Royal Caribbean’s directions finish. No source publishes the terminal’s own coordinates, so treat it as close, not exact. They’re road miles by our routing, with no traffic: Marina Romea 1.7 road miles, the old town 8.1 to 8.6 road miles, Bologna 53.6 to 54.6 road miles.

Two of the twelve are in Marina Romea, two across the canal in Marina di Ravenna and Punta Marina, six in the old town and two in Bologna. The canal matters. Across it, our routing takes the car ferry from Marina di Ravenna to Porto Corsini, €3 a car per Start Romagna — the only reason those two look close.

The Night-Before Score, out of 100

Five things make a Ravenna night before easy or hard. We score each one only from what the hotel publishes, on its own site, its brand’s, the tourism board’s listing or its Expedia listing, and we say which.

If nobody prints it, it scores zero. Visit Ravenna names three hotels, NH, Bisanzio and the Cappello, as pick-up points for its transfer — that’s the operator’s word, not the hotels’, so it’s on their pages as information, not points.

Where the car goes while you sail

None of the twelve prints a price to leave the car while you sail, and the port has no long-term parking, per Royal Caribbean. The city’s own car park is the published option.

Every option side by side: Ravenna cruise parking, compared.

What we checked and left out

We checked 17 hotels; twelve made the list. Ravenna has no MICHELIN Key hotel, so our splurge list reaches Bologna’s Grand Hotel Majestic, which has one, plus Palazzo Bezzi from this list.

Landing the day before?

Pre-cruise hotel FAQ