Guide · Amsterdam · 2026-09-10
A first massage booking in years: a step-by-step guide for the experienced traveller
If the last booking of this kind was a long time ago, or never, this guide walks through the whole of it in the order it happens. Each step says what you do, what the house does and what it costs, so that nothing arrives as a surprise.
While you read
Nothing here asks you to decide anything. The whole page can be read and left alone.
People who read this page have usually booked a great deal in their lives: flights with connections, restaurants a month out, rooms with a view of a particular canal. Very few of them have booked this, or not for a long stretch of years. That is an ordinary place to start from, and the process below is written for exactly that reader. It runs from the evening you first think about it to the moment the door closes behind her, and at no point does it assume that you already know how some part of it works.
Three decisions to make on your own
Before a word goes to anyone, settle three things privately. The first is the evening: the date, and roughly the hour, in Amsterdam time rather than whatever your phone still shows from home. The second is the length. The third is whether you would like a particular therapist or would rather describe the evening and hear who is free. Nothing is binding until you confirm in writing, but a first message that already answers all three shortens the exchange to a handful of lines.
On length, the arithmetic is fixed and does not move with the day or the hour. One hour is 180 euros, ninety minutes 270, two hours 360 and three hours 540. The overnight, eight hours taken as a single block, is 1,250. Guests coming back to this after a long gap tend to find sixty minutes quick, because a real share of it goes on arriving and settling in. Ninety minutes gives the start its own room without eating into what follows; two hours takes the clock out of the evening altogether.
Looking through the profiles
Each therapist who keeps hours with the house has a profile on the roster. It gives her age, the languages she speaks, the district she sets out from and photographs published with her agreement, together with an identical table of rates. There is no need to read all of them. Two or three that appeal are plenty: name one in your message and keep the others in mind. If you would rather not choose at all, one sentence about the kind of evening you want does the same work, and the reply tells you who is free on that date.
The format deserves a moment as well. Sensual massage and erotic oil massage have the fewest unfamiliar parts and sit comfortably with a first booking after years away. Tantra is slower and more deliberate, paced by breathing, and needs ninety minutes as a minimum. If a word on the services page means nothing to you, asking what it means is a perfectly usual opening question, and it is answered without fuss.
Step one: the first message
Keep it brief. The reply needs five pieces of information and no more:
- where you are staying, meaning the hotel, or the street and house number of an apartment;
- the date and the hour you have in mind;
- how long you would like;
- a name from the roster, or a line that describes the evening;
- whether you are alone or travelling as two.
You need not explain why you are writing, how long it has been or anything about yourself beyond those five points. If it helps to mention that this is a first booking in many years, mention it; the figure stays the same and the reply can be pitched at the right pace. Write in ordinary sentences. There is no vocabulary to learn first and no form of words that is expected.
Step two: the reply
The answer arrives in the same thread. It says whether the therapist you named is free at that hour, or who is free if she is not, and it gives the figure for the length you asked for. Because this is your first booking with the house, it also says that half the fee goes ahead to confirm it, and states the exact sum. On ninety minutes that means 135 euros now and 135 when she arrives; on two hours, 180 and 180.
Nothing is fixed yet. Ask whatever you like: what a format involves in practical terms, whether the bed in your room will do, how an arrival works in your particular building. Take your time over it. A booking is only held once you have confirmed it and the deposit has been settled, so a question costs you nothing at all.
Step three: confirming and paying the deposit
When you are content, say so in the thread. The amount and the way to pay it are given there and in no other place, so disregard any figure or payment detail that reaches you by some other route. Card is how most guests pay; Revolut, Wise and cryptocurrency are accepted for anyone who already uses them. Bank transfer and PayPal are not used, and cash cannot act as a deposit, since cash only changes hands once she is in the room.
The deposit is not a charge added to the price. It is the first half of the price, paid a little early. If the booking is for later the same day, you are also asked to write in the thread that you want the session carried out straight away and that you understand the fourteen-day withdrawal period for distance purchases will not apply once it has taken place. It is one sentence, written once, and the booking terms explain why it is asked for.
Step four: the hours in between
If the evening is several days off, the booking simply waits in the thread. Nothing more is needed from you, though you can write whenever you like with a question or a change. On the day, a little preparation makes the first minutes easier. Turn the heating up an hour before the start, since lying still calls for more warmth than sitting in an armchair. Light a lamp and leave the ceiling light off. Clear a chair near the door for her coat and bag. If you are in an apartment with an unusual entrance, such as a shared street door, a courtyard or a bell without a name on it, put the directions into the thread the day before rather than in the last half hour.
A same-day booking has a shorter wait with a fixed shape: forty to sixty minutes from your confirmation to her knock, anywhere in central Amsterdam. A hotel near Schiphol is arranged separately, and the journey time out there is agreed with you before anything else about the evening is fixed.
Step five: the knock
She comes to the room itself. For a hotel, give the room number as soon as you have it; for an apartment, the floor and which door. She may ask to see a photo document when you open the door, however plainly grown up you are, because everyone present has to be twenty-one or over and the request is made of every guest alike. The document is looked at, handed straight back, and nothing from it is copied or written down. The balance is paid at this point too, on arrival, so that nothing practical is left hanging over the rest of the evening: the second half of the fee in euros, or in cash in another major currency if the exact sum was confirmed to you in writing beforehand.
Step six: the first quarter hour
Nothing begins the moment the door closes. She takes off her coat, sits down, and the two of you talk for a few minutes. The warmth of the room, the light, the pace and the pressure are agreed here rather than guessed at later. She tells you in her own words what the session includes and where her limits are, and those limits stand for the whole visit. You are welcome to ask questions now as well, and you will not be the first guest to ask what happens next. The settling-in time is part of the length you booked, never an extra charge.
Step seven: the session
The session runs at the speed agreed at the start, and that speed can change whenever you ask. Say so if you are cool, if the pressure should be lighter, if you would like to turn over or to stop for a moment. None of it interrupts anything; it is the normal conversation of a session and she expects it. What the session includes is her decision and was stated before it began. If you would like something to be different, ask, and take her answer as the answer.
Guests returning after years sometimes worry about keeping track of the time. You do not have to. She keeps it, and she tells you when the booked length is nearly up, so the end never arrives as a jolt.
Step eight: the end of the visit
When the time is up she gathers her towels and oil and leaves the room much as she found it. Nothing further is paid, because the fee was settled in two halves. If you would like to book again on the same trip, say so in the thread afterwards. A later booking of one or two hours on the same day, at an address in the city, can then be paid entirely on arrival, because the house has looked after you before; a longer or more complicated booking carries half ahead again.
If the plan changes before the day
Long trips move about, and the rules are written with that in mind. You may shift the booking to another date once, free, if you ask more than twenty-four hours before the start and the new date falls within fourteen days; the deposit crosses over with it. Call it off with more than twenty-four hours to spare and the whole deposit is repaid. Inside the last twenty-four hours, before she has left, half the deposit is kept and half comes back. Once she is on her way, the deposit is kept in full, unless another guest takes the hour, in which case all of it is returned. None of this ever turns into a claim for damages, and the booking terms set it out with worked examples.
What you can leave out entirely
There is no account to open, no membership, no password and no mailing list. Nobody asks you for a date of birth in the thread or for the reason behind your trip. The house needs where, when, how long and with whom, and nothing beyond that. Anything that ought to be on formal record, a complaint or a question about your data, goes by e-mail to contact@amsterdammassages.com and is answered in writing. The privacy page says what is kept and for how long.
The short version to keep
Decide the evening, the length and the name. Write five lines. Read the reply and ask whatever you want to ask. Confirm, and pay half by card. Warm the room and clear a chair. Open the door, show a document if asked and pay the balance. Sit down for a quarter hour before anything begins, and let her say what the session includes. That is all of it, and the booking steps laid out one per line give the same sequence with the rule behind each part.