The arrival window: forty to sixty minutes to your door

The arrival window is the stretch of time between your written confirmation of a same-day booking and the moment she knocks at your door. In central Amsterdam it is forty to sixty minutes, and it does not change with the district, the day of the week or the hour of the evening.

Why a window and not a minute

She sets out from the district where she lives, and a journey across the centre of a city of canals, trams and bicycles can be quick or slow depending on bridges, weather and traffic. Forty to sixty minutes is the honest range. Promising a precise minute would mean either keeping you waiting after it or asking her to hurry through streets full of cyclists, and neither helps the evening begin calmly.

How to use the window

Forty minutes is enough to get the room ready if you start as soon as you confirm. Turn the heating up first, since it takes longest to have any effect. Then the lamp, the chair by the door, the extra pillows if you asked for them, and a document to hand in case she asks to see one. Anything unusual about the entrance to your building should already be in the thread before you confirm, not written in the last ten minutes.

Bookings made ahead

The window applies to same-day bookings made for as soon as possible. A booking made for a particular hour, whether that evening or three weeks away, starts at that hour. If you would like her to arrive at nine and not at eight fifteen, give nine as the time in your message, followed by the words Amsterdam time.

Schiphol

Hotels near the airport sit outside the central window. The journey time is agreed with you before anything else about the booking is fixed, and half the fee goes ahead. The entry on Schiphol by arrangement covers the rest.

What it costs

Nothing extra. Her journey anywhere in central Amsterdam is included in the rates on every profile, and no charge is added for the hour or the day.