Symi Visitor Accommodation

You’ve arrived at Rhodes airport and managed to find your way out. Now if you catch the bus into town things are fairly straightforward. It will drop you in the Mandraki area at the back of the New Market/Nea Agora, walk round the side of the building and you’re opposite Mandraki Harbour. If you travel by taxi, you need to know which ferry you’re catching, to tell the driver where to take you, as there are four possible departure points in different parts of the Rhodes Town waterfront.
One of the commonest questions anyone even remotely connected with tourism on Symi gets is
“What is the ferry timetable for (insert any month but the current one)?”. It is also one of the hardest to answer.
There’s a linked question “where does my ferry go from?”. This is easier, but still requires care in answering.
Let me explain why. There are two main classes of ferry service in Greece – ones operated at the commercial risk of the ferry company, and ones subsidised by the government as lifelines for otherwise isolated communities. The subsidised services go out to tender, but the awarding of new tenders can run very close to the expiry date of the old ones. Whether a service is tendered or commercial the actual timetable has to be approved by the Ministry of Marine and Port Police.
Local ferries in Greece aren’t the most profitable in the world and it is easy to see why the commercial services are tailored very tightly indeed to what the demand is expected to be, resulting in timetables being published very close to the actual sailing date. Where the operators seem to be missing a trick is in securing advanced booking revenue, which might well improve their cashflow significantly.
However the net effect is that the timetable changes frequently in the period October to May,and while it is pretty stable from June to mid-September, the actual times don’t all become available until mid-May,
Currently there are four companies operating scheduled ferry services between Rhodes and Symi and vice-versa.
ANES, Symi’s own shipping line, operates the Symi II, a small catamaran passenger ferrry which can also take a few cars or motorbikes, and leaves from Mandraki Harbour and spends its whole life shuttling between Rhodes and Symi, often calling at Panormitis Monastery on the way; and the Proteus, a smallish passenger/car/truck ferry that runs the subsidised salings Rhodes-Symi-Tilos-Kos, and Rhodes-Kastellorizo. It also does some morning and evening trips purely between Rhodes and Symi, which aren’t subsidised. The subsidised trips are at cheaper fares than the commercial ones. Proteus leaves mostly from Akandia harbour (also known as the back of beyond), but can sometimes sneak into the Commercial Harbour when it isn’t full of cruise ships. (always tell the taxi driver which ferry you want to catch – they know which harbour each boat uses and if there is any doubt will check with port staff before unloading you).
Dodekanisos Seaways have two fast catamarans that take passengers and a small number of cars, the Dodecanese Express and the Dodecanese Pride. These are operating slightly differently to previous years, in that on the current timetable a boat overnights in Symi Harbour 4 nights a week, rather than the previous pattern of one boat starting and finishing at Patmos each day, and the other at Rhodes. Several days a week there are also sailings between Symi, Kos, Kalymnos, Leros, Lipsi and Patmos. The Rhodes departure point is Kolonna Harbour
ANEK run the subsidised Piraeus-islands-Rhodes route via Symi twice a week and use the medium size car ferry Ierapetra, This arrives and departs from Akandia Harbour in Rhodes
Finally, the Tilos based fast catamaran Sea Star runs Tilos-Symi-Rhodes on a Sunday morning, returning on Sunday evening and fills a gap in the other operators schedules. It uses Mandraki Harbour. Sea Star doesn’t have a website, but this phone number will be able to tell you as much as anyone knows:  0030 22410 37101.

Some general tips: Refreshment facilities and shade are in short supply at Kolonna and Akandia, if you arrive early there, bring water and a hat. If you’re travelling on the Proteus, look out for a white VW van – this is actually the ANES mobile ticket office. All scheduled ferry services in Greece require you to have a computer-generated ticket before boarding. This is to prevent more tickets being sold than the number of people the ferry is licensed to carry safely. You can book on line with ANES and Dodecanese Seaways and pick the tickets up from the ticket office/desk/van before you board, but it is usually fine to just book when you arrive at the boat.
If you need to spend the night in Rhodes because the plane arrival doesn’t match the ferries, there are lots of hotels within a reasonable distance of the ferries. If you are booking your Symi stay with Symi Visitor Accommodation, Wendy or Adriana can offer advice and make hotel reservations for you as well.
Those unfortunates whose plane arrives in the early hours of the morning and just want to get to Symi without bothering with a hotel should consider spending a few hours in one of the 24-hour cafes operated by the Swedish Bakery company on Rhodes – the coffee and pastries are excellent. All the taxi drivers know where to find one of them, and you can get the staff to phone for another taxi to the right harbour when you’re ready to leave.