That's only true if you accept Einstein's speed limit.
There may be advanced civilizations out there that never got the memo.
The thing is, people take Einstein's speed limit too literally. As in, the speed of light is a fixed constant everywhere in the Universe. So light takes a long time to travel here from nearby stars and galaxies.
But, and this is a big but, Einstein's theory of relativity was about relativity. An observer of an event will experience passage of time differently than someone else traveling much faster along a different path. For example, astronauts watches record a different span of time while away than peoples' watches here on Earth. Short period of time as observed by the astronauts, but much longer period of time for Earth-bound relatives. Alien astronauts may be able to travel gigantic distances by bending space-time, where both distance and elapsed time (as well as mass) are not limiting as they are to us Earth-bound folks. (Also glamorized as warp travel in so many sci-fi stories.) As you say, advanced beings never got the memo about the limiting factors of traditional space travel.