Couples massage in Amsterdam after a long flight to meet the ship

What a long flight actually leaves behind

Not tiredness in the ordinary sense, which is the mistake people make when planning the evening. A long flight leaves a body that has been still for too long in a seat that was the wrong shape, mildly dehydrated, and running on a clock that is now several hours out of step with the window. The usual result is a couple who are exhausted and cannot sleep, which is a different problem from being tired. Brisk work makes it worse. Slow, warm and long is what shifts it, and the two formats named for that are oil work and sensual work, both of which ask nothing of the room beyond warmth, a bed and the towels she carries with her.

Two clocks, and the hour that gets written down wrong

The commonest way a fly-in evening goes wrong has nothing to do with the massage. A phone still keeping the time of the country you left will happily show the right hour in the wrong zone, and an evening booked an hour out on the one night that cannot slide is an expensive mistake. Give the hour in Amsterdam time, and where there is any doubt give it twice, once in Amsterdam time and once in the time you are still on. It cannot then be misread by either side. It is worth doing this even when the two of you are certain, because certainty at the end of a travel day has a poor record.

How much evening there actually is

Land at six, clear the airport by seven, reach a room in the centre by eight on a good day. That leaves an evening that looks like four hours and behaves like two, once eating is allowed for and once the boarding hour in the morning is subtracted from the far end. Ninety minutes starting at half past eight is the booking that fits it, and it finishes by ten with a real night behind it. An hour starting at nine works too and nobody should apologise for booking it. What does not work is three hours starting at eleven, and the house will say so rather than take the longer booking without comment. The page on the night before embarkation works the arithmetic through in detail.

A room at a Schiphol airport hotel, by arrangement

Some couples never reach the centre at all. A late arrival, an early transfer or simply a preference for not moving twice puts a fair number of people in a room at an airport hotel for the fly-in night, and that is the one address outside central Amsterdam the house takes. It works differently from a city booking. It is arranged rather than quoted, with the length of her journey agreed with you before the hour is fixed, and the forty to sixty minute window does not apply to it. The rates are the same as they are in the city and half the fee confirms the booking. Say at the start of the first message that the room is at the airport, because the reply takes a different shape from the outset.

The centre or the airport, decided on the transfer rather than the room

Couples ask which is the better choice and the honest answer depends on one thing: how the two of you are getting to the quay in the morning. Where the transfer leaves from the airport area, a room there removes a journey with cases at seven in the morning and is worth more than a central room with a view. Where the transfer leaves from the centre, or where the two of you are making your own way to the water, a central room is the easier morning. Both are ordinary bookings, both carry the same figures, and the difference for the evening itself is that a city room gets an arrival window and an airport room gets an agreed journey time.

One therapist or two, on a night with a morning attached

Two guests can take one therapist between them, with her alternating rather than dividing the time, or a therapist each at double that rate with the two sessions closing together. On a fly-in night the first is the commoner choice, and not only for the figure: after a long flight one of the two is frequently more interested in being in a warm room than in a session, and an arrangement that allows for that is better than one that pretends otherwise. Two therapists want more notice, because two women have to be free for the same hours, and a fly-in date is known weeks ahead. Ask when the flights are booked rather than when they land.

Delays, and what the notice scale does with them

Flights move. Where the two of you know in the afternoon that the landing will be late, write straight away and the booking is moved rather than lost, provided the message reaches the thread more than twenty-four hours before the booked time. Inside the final day, a delay is read on the notice scale like any other change, because a flight moved by an airline sits on your side of the line rather than on the force majeure side of it. That scale is short: nothing kept beyond twenty-four hours, half the deposit kept inside the final day while she has not yet left, the whole deposit kept once she is on her way, repaid in full if the hour is taken by somebody else, and reduced to the actual loss if you can show it was smaller. Nothing is ever claimed beyond the deposit.

What to write, and when

Write when the flights and the hotel are booked, not when the plane lands. Give the date, the hour in Amsterdam time, the length, the district or the words airport hotel, whether it is one therapist or two, and the hour the two of you have to be somewhere in the morning. Half the fee confirms it, and the room number follows in the same thread once you have checked in. If the flight lands earlier than expected and the two of you want to start earlier, say so and the hour is moved where it can be. The booking page sets out the sequence, the formats page narrows the list, and the questions page answers what most couples ask after a first long flight.