What to confirm before the trip, in order

Messages written from abroad weeks before a trip have a way of arriving in pieces. A date in one message, a hotel in another, a question about length a day later and a change of mind the day after that. None of this is a problem for the house, but it makes the thread harder to reread on the day, and a thread that is hard to reread is where misunderstandings come from. Settling the details in a fixed order solves that. By the time the deposit goes ahead, every line that matters is in one place and in a sequence anybody can follow.

The order below is not arbitrary. Each item depends on the one before it. The hour decides who is free. The address decides whether the hour can be kept. The length and the number of therapists decide the figure. The figure decides the deposit. Work through it from the first item and nothing needs to be revisited.

1. The hour, on a named date

Everything else waits on this. Write the date with its weekday, and write the start time in Amsterdam time. Travellers crossing time zones sometimes type the hour as it will be on their own clock, which moves the booking by six or nine hours without anyone noticing until the day. If there is any doubt, write both: eight in the evening Amsterdam time, and what that is where you are now.

The hour is also the item that decides which women can be named. A diary that is open at seven may be closed at ten, and the reply to the first message will say who is free at the hour you gave. If the woman you want is not, you can keep the hour and name another, or keep her and move the hour. Either way, the hour is fixed first, so that the rest of the thread has something to hang on.

2. The address type

Not the room number, which comes much later, but the kind of place you will be staying. There are three possibilities, and each is handled slightly differently.

A hotel in central Amsterdam is the ordinary case. The name of the hotel, or even just the district, is enough at this stage, and the room number follows after check-in. An apartment rented for the stay needs the street and the house number once you have them, plus the floor and the name on the bell, because apartment buildings in the old centre often have several doors sharing one stairwell. A room at Schiphol or at one of the airport hotels is arranged separately, with the journey time agreed with you before anything is fixed, and it always carries half ahead.

Anywhere outside Amsterdam and Schiphol is not reached, so a traveller whose hotel turns out to be further out should say so now rather than on the day. The outcall entry explains why every booking is made to your address rather than to a premises of the house.

3. The length

With the hour and the address in place, the length can be chosen. The ladder runs from one hour through ninety minutes, two hours and three hours, and on to the eight hour overnight. Each hour beyond the third is added at the same hourly figure.

A planner writing weeks ahead tends to guess the length rather than choose it, and the guess is usually too short. Something slow and unhurried barely finds its pace in an hour. Ninety minutes is a comfortable floor for a first booking, and two hours suits a guest who wants the evening to feel unrushed. Three hours and above belong to a night with nothing after it. The length can be changed later on the same evening if her diary allows it; a longer booking adds its half to the deposit, a shorter one reduces the balance.

4. One therapist or two, and one guest or two

This is two questions that belong together, because between them they decide which row of the rate table applies. One guest with one therapist is the ordinary booking. One guest with two therapists is a four-hand booking, described on the four-hand page. Two guests sharing one therapist, and two guests with a therapist each, are the couple rows.

If there are two guests, both of them must be twenty-one or over, and both should expect that a photo document may be asked for at the door. If there are two therapists, name both, and say whether either one alone would still suit you if the other is not free that evening. A two-therapist booking always carries half ahead, whatever the lead time.

5. The rate row

Once the length and the combination are known, the figure is simply read off the table on her profile. There are four rows, and they keep a fixed proportion to each other. The rows for two guests sharing one therapist and for a lone guest with two are each double the first row at every length; a couple with two therapists sits at four times it. Along each row the lengths run from an hour through ninety minutes, two hours and three hours, with the overnight printed at the end as a block of its own.

The row is the same for every woman on the roster, and it is the same on every evening. There is no weekend supplement and no travel charge inside central Amsterdam. The reply will quote the figure in full; if it does not agree with the row you expected, the thread is the place to say so, before anything is paid.

6. The deposit

Half of the figure goes ahead on any booking made more than twenty-four hours before its start, which covers every booking fixed before a trip. Half also goes ahead on an overnight, on two therapists, on Schiphol and the airport hotels, on a peak date, on three hours or more and on a first booking with the house, though a booking from home is already inside the first rule. Card is the usual route, and Revolut, Wise and crypto are accepted as well. The details appear in the thread once the other five items are agreed.

Two points are worth confirming alongside the deposit rather than assuming. First, the cancellation scale: more than twenty-four hours before the booked time, the whole deposit comes back; inside the final day but before she sets out, half of it is kept; once she is on her way, all of it is kept, unless the hour is taken by another guest. Second, the one-move rule: one change of date, asked for more than twenty-four hours ahead and to a date within fourteen days, carries the deposit across in full. Both are set out on the booking terms page.

The confirmation, read back

When the deposit has arrived, the house confirms the booking in writing. Read that message against the six items above before you close the thread for the weeks until the trip. Date and weekday. Hour in Amsterdam time. Hotel, apartment or airport. Length. One or two therapists, one or two guests. Figure and deposit. If all six agree with what you meant, the booking is complete, and the only thing left to send is the room number on the day.

A thread settled in this order is easy to reread from a phone in a taxi queue, which is where travellers usually end up looking at it. It also makes a later change easier, because it is obvious which line is changing and which lines stay as they are.

What the thread never fixes

There is a seventh item that some first-time planners expect to settle and that the thread will not touch: what a session includes. That is hers to decide, in the room, on the evening. She tells you her limits in her own words when she arrives, and they stand for the whole visit. A message asking about it weeks in advance is answered on the six calendar items only, and the silence on the seventh is not an oversight.

The same is true of anything that sounds like a promise about the evening beyond the hour, the length and the figure. A deposit holds her time; it does not buy a say over how that time is spent. A guest who presses on a limit she has named ends the visit at that point, with the fee for the reserved time still due and nothing added. Guests who arrive at the evening knowing this tend to find it a restful part of the whole arrangement, because there is nothing to negotiate.

A first message that covers all six

For a planner who wants to get it right in one go, the six items fit in a few short lines. The date and weekday, the hour in Amsterdam time, the hotel or district, the length, one or two of each, and the name of the woman you would like. Leave the figure and the deposit to the reply; they follow directly from the rest. The booking page sets out the full sequence, and the booking timeline places each step on the calendar between home and the knock.