Body to body massage at your hotel in Amsterdam, adapted to the room you booked

In a studio the surface under you is a firm table. In a hotel it is whatever the house chose, and Amsterdam hotels choose widely: plush pillow-top beds in the grand houses along the canals, firm pocket-sprung mattresses in the business towers of Zuidas, thinner and sometimes springy ones at the top of steep stairs in converted canal houses. Because the pressure of this technique comes from weight, the mattress soaks up part of it. On a very soft bed the therapist moves more of her load onto her own knees and forearms and works at a steeper angle, so the depth still reaches you instead of sinking into the foam. On a firm bed the same weight lands more directly and she lies flatter. There is no need to warn her about the mattress, since she feels it within a minute, but do say if you prefer the firmer end of the scale.

Full contact needs the body to lie straight with some space either side, and a narrow hotel double can feel cramped once a second person is working along its length. The solution is geometry. Lying slightly diagonally across a double gives the therapist the full length of the bed for long passes down the back and legs, and the corners for kneeling. In a twin room, pushing the two beds together makes a surface wider than most kings; the join is covered by towels and vanishes under oil. In a suite with a sofa, the bed is still the better surface, because sofa cushions shift under weight. If you have booked two therapists, a king-size bed or two singles pushed together is what lets both of them work without climbing over one another.

Hotel climate systems are built to keep a sleeping guest comfortable, not an oiled one, and they respond sluggishly. Skin covered in warm oil sheds heat fast, and a chill is the quickest way to make a body brace against the very weight it is supposed to sink beneath. Raise the thermostat two or three degrees the moment you send your message rather than when she knocks, so the room has the whole half hour to warm. Draw the curtains, which cuts draughts from old canal-house windows as much as it adds privacy. If the air conditioning refuses to switch off, point its vanes at the ceiling. A room that feels slightly too warm while you are dressed is usually just right for an oiled body lying still for an hour or more.

Oiled full contact asks nothing of the bathroom except a shower beforehand and, if you like, another afterwards. Nuru is different: the gel is rinsed off at the end, so a shower you can stand in comfortably matters, and the waterproof sheet she brings protects the hotel linen beneath. Soapy moves the session into the bathroom itself, which is why it depends on the room: a walk-in shower or a bathtub with space around it works, while a narrow cubicle behind a folding door does not. If you are unsure what your room offers, a one-line description in the thread settles it, and the oiled or gel form can be suggested instead when the bathroom is too compact. Amsterdam hotel rooms vary so much that describing yours in a sentence spares a disappointed moment later.

Oil and hotel sheets are old adversaries, which is why towels go down over the bed before a drop is poured, with a waterproof sheet underneath them for nuru. Both arrive in the therapist's bag and both leave in it. What housekeeping finds the next morning is a bed that has been slept in, nothing more. A few further habits help. Keep oil away from an upholstered headboard by lying with your head a little way down the bed. Hang the do not disturb sign before she arrives, not because anything is secret but because a knock from room service halfway through is a poor interruption to a slow session. Nothing about the massage is charged to the room, because the fee is settled with the therapist in person.

Send four facts by WhatsApp or Telegram: the time, the length, the name or street of your hotel, and the form of contact you want. The room number can wait until you have read the confirmation, which arrives in about ten minutes and names the therapist and her arrival window. Anywhere in the centre she knocks twenty to thirty minutes later, having come straight up, so there is nothing for you to arrange with the front desk. If you are staying at one of the hotels around Schiphol rather than in the city itself, those are available by arrangement: write with the hotel's location and your timing, and the arrival is set out in the thread before you confirm. Every guest must be twenty-one or older, and every therapist is too.

Some hotel walls are thicker than others, and a canal house divided into twenty rooms seldom has the best insulation in the city. The technique itself is quiet: there is no slapping, no need for loud music, and conversation can be kept to a murmur. Soft background music masks what little sound there is. The hour of the booking has no effect on the price. One therapist costs €180 an hour, two therapists €360 an hour, and the eight-hour overnight €1,250, a figure that covers the night and the slow beginning of the following day. Payment happens once, when she arrives, in cash of any major currency, by card or in crypto. No deposit, no surcharge after midnight, and no line on your folio for anyone to read at checkout.