The First Booking and the Next Trip

Plenty of travellers come to Amsterdam more than once. A business trip that repeats every quarter, a friend who lives in the city, a route that passes through Schiphol several times a year. A guest who booked an evening from home on the first trip will often do it again on the second, and the second booking is shaped by the first in a few ways that are worth knowing.

What carries over

The thread carries over. There is no account and no profile to log into; the conversation you used the first time is the one you use again, and writing into it is the natural way to start. If you have changed phone or number since, write from the new one and mention the date of the earlier booking, or write to the address on the site.

Knowledge carries over too, which is the more useful part. You know how the thread works, what the first message should hold, how the deposit is paid and what the arrival-day message looks like. The second booking usually takes half the messages of the first.

What starts again

Everything to do with the evening itself. The date and hour are new. The woman you name may be the same, or someone else on the roster, and her diary is checked afresh. Nothing from the first booking gives priority to the second.

The deposit also starts again. A booking made from home is made more than twenty-four hours before it starts, and every booking of that kind carries half ahead, whether it is the first or the tenth. The first-booking deposit rule stops applying after the first booking, but the lead-time rule does not, so a traveller planning from home will keep sending half ahead on every trip.

The one booking paid entirely at the door

There is one booking that carries no deposit at all: a same-day hour or two at a city address from a guest the house has looked after before. For a returning traveller, that booking becomes possible once in Amsterdam. Write on the day for one or two hours later that evening, at a hotel in central Amsterdam, and the whole fee is paid on arrival.

Such a booking has its own rule for cancelling. With no deposit behind it, called off before she has set out it costs nothing; called off after she has set out, it costs the share of the fee her journey represents, and nothing beyond that. The booking terms page sets it out.

Booking ahead or booking on the day

So a returning traveller has a real choice the first-time planner does not. Book ahead from home and send half, with the evening and the woman fixed weeks before. Or wait until arriving and book the same day, paying everything at the door, with the risk that the evening or the woman you want is already taken. Guests who travel on fixed dates and have a clear idea of whom they want tend to keep booking ahead. Guests whose evenings are unpredictable sometimes switch to the same day once they know how it works.

Neither is the right answer. Booking ahead buys certainty; booking on the day buys flexibility and a simpler payment. The deposit rule is built so that both are available to a returning guest.

What stays the same on every trip

Some things never change. Everyone present is twenty-one or over, and she may ask for a photo document at the door. The figure is the one on the profile, with no loyalty rate and no premium. The forty to sixty minutes apply in every central district. And what a session includes is decided by her in the room, on the second booking as on the first, whatever happened on the earlier trip. A guest who met the same woman before should not assume the evening will repeat itself; she decides afresh each time.

A short note on privacy

The thread from the first booking stays for twelve months after its last message, as set out on the privacy page, and it can be removed earlier on request. A returning guest who asked for the first thread to be removed simply starts a new one, and the booking is treated as a returning guest's booking as long as the house can confirm it has looked after him before.