Booking an evening on one of the city's big dates
An event date is booked the way any other date is, in writing and with four facts in the first message. What changes is the timing: the hour you want is the hour a lot of other visitors want too, so it is usually fixed from home, weeks before the trip.
A booking for King's Day or the Saturday of the Canal Parade runs in four moves. You write. A reply comes back with a name, a figure and the hour. Where a deposit applies, and on a peak date it always does, the half is paid. Then she arrives at the agreed time. Nothing is held before the reply, and nothing is owed before you answer it.
The four facts, written for an event date
Where you will be. The district and the building, with the room number once you have it. If the hotel is not yet confirmed, say so; an hour can be fixed against a district and the address added later in the same thread.
Which date, and what hour. Name the event if the date is one, and give the hour on the Amsterdam clock rather than the one at home. A start that avoids the thick of the crowd is easier to plan than one set in the middle of it.
How long. An hour, ninety minutes, two or three hours, or eight for the overnight.
Who. A name from the roster, or two or three, or a line about the evening you have in mind. The reply says which of them are free at your hour, and the choice is yours.
Why peak dates carry a deposit
King's Day, Pride, the Amsterdam Dance Event and the stretch from Christmas to New Year are peak dates, and so is a large conference week. Every booking that lands on one carries half the fee ahead, whoever books it and however short it is. The same half applies all year to a first booking with the house, to anything fixed more than twenty-four hours ahead, to an overnight, to two therapists, to a Schiphol or airport hotel room and to any session of three hours or more. One booking pays nothing ahead: a returning client writing on the day for one or two hours at a central address, on a date that is not a peak date, settles the whole fee at the door.
How far ahead to write
For the four peak dates fixed on the calendar, two to four weeks is a comfortable lead, and for New Year's Eve it is worth writing earlier, because the hours on either side of midnight go first. Marathon weekend and most nights of the light festival are ordinary dates in the deposit sense, though a booking fixed from home still carries half because it is made more than a day ahead. The New Year page covers the one night of the year that needs planning a long way ahead.
Paying the half, and the rest
The deposit goes by card, or by Revolut, Wise or crypto if you prefer, to details that appear in the confirmed thread and nowhere else. The house takes no bank transfer and no PayPal, and cash is never a deposit, since it is only handed over in the room. What remains is settled on her arrival. If plans change, what is kept follows your notice: the whole deposit back with more than twenty-four hours to spare, half of it kept inside the final day while she has not set out, all of it kept once she is on her way, and all of it repaid if another guest takes the hour. The terms set this out formally.
Half the fee confirms the booking before she sets out, on every peak date and on a first booking; what is kept after a cancellation follows your notice, and a returning client's same-day hour or two at a city address on an ordinary date is paid on arrival. Booking terms.