The therapists who bring hotel massage to Schiphol rooms
Forty-five women work with the house, and between them they cover most of the languages you heard at the transfer desk. Describe what suits the night and the reply says who is free.
The cards tell you a name, the languages, the photographs. What they cannot tell you is which of these women to write to at four in the morning, which is unfortunately the only question that matters at four in the morning.
Start with the language
Not for novelty. Because at the end of a fourteen-hour day conducted in your second language, the third one is where the tiredness shows. Every page lists what she speaks, and you are welcome to write to us in whatever language the day actually happened in rather than translating yourself into English somewhere over the North Sea. The women whose pages carry your language are not a shortlist of favourites; they are a shortlist of the people you will not have to work to be understood by. On an ordinary evening that is a small convenience. On a long night it is most of the booking.
Three in the morning is its own skill
Some therapists are in their element at nine in the evening, in a room where the guest has had a good day and wants it to go on a while. A smaller number are genuinely good at three. That is temperament rather than technique: walking into a room where someone is wrung out, slightly unmoored and not entirely sure which country this is, and not needing conversation to fill the space. No photograph has ever shown it, so say in the message that it is a three-in-the-morning booking, and whoever takes it knows what kind of hour she is walking into.
Forty-five women, twenty-four nationalities between them, every one of them twenty-one or over. Each photograph is of the woman on whose page it appears, taken with her agreement. That is a small thing in your own city and a larger one in a place you landed in three hours ago with nobody to ask. If the woman you chose cannot come, you are told before anyone sets out, and you either choose again or the deposit comes back.
Choosing is easier if you describe the night instead of the type. The hour, the length, whether you want to talk or would rather not, one therapist or two. The reply comes back with the names of who is free.
The roster behind hotel massage at Schiphol, by language
Every woman on the roster speaks English, and ten of them work in English alone. French comes next with seven speakers, followed by Russian and Spanish with six each and Ukrainian with four. Dutch, Italian, Romanian and Portuguese have three speakers apiece, Greek has two, and German, Hungarian, Croatian, Serbian, Polish, Latvian, Lithuanian and Czech have one each.
A few combinations are rarer and worth knowing about. Claire works in French, German and English. Brielle and Constance move between French, Dutch and English. Naya and Vivi add Portuguese and Spanish to their English, and Karina speaks Latvian, Russian and English.
The pages list the languages each woman works in and nothing about where she comes from, since the hour runs on words rather than on a passport. Celia, Rossy, Nico and Caroline all work in Spanish. When the language matters most, the language line on each page is the one to read first.
Where they set out from
Thirteen of the women live in Amsterdam Centrum, eleven in the Jordaan, eleven in Oud-Zuid and ten in De Pijp. That spread is part of why a door anywhere in the centre is forty to sixty minutes away whichever district you are staying in, and why no neighbourhood is ever quoted faster than another. For the Schiphol hotels the starting point counts for more, which is one reason those rooms are arranged on enquiry rather than timed from a page.
Asking for a name, or for two
If one page has already made the decision, name her in the first message. She may be free, already booked, or not working that night at all, and the reply will tell you which rather than quietly offering somebody else. If she is unavailable, the reply can name others on the roster who share her language, and you decide whether any of them suits.
For two therapists at once, either name both, or name one and ask which of the others also take bookings for two. For one guest the pair is charged at twice the single hourly rate, for a couple at four times it, and the two women arrive together. How to set out either request is covered on the booking page.