Couples massage in Amsterdam on a cruise turnaround day

The shape of the day, and where the gap opens

It is a predictable gap and it is almost always the same size. Check-out is between ten and eleven, boarding opens in the early afternoon at the earliest, and a cabin that is genuinely ready before four is unusual. That leaves five or six hours in the middle with no room attached to them, which is why the day is spent walking further than anybody intended and sitting in places chosen because they had chairs. The gap is not a problem to be filled with sightseeing; most couples on a turnaround day have already seen the city, either the day before or on a previous trip. It is a problem of having nowhere private, and the solution is to have somewhere private for part of it.

A day room is an ordinary address

Hotels in the centre let rooms by the afternoon, and a day room taken from noon to five is a room the two of you hold for those hours, which is all a booking requires. It is not a lesser kind of address and nothing about the arrangement changes because the room is yours for an afternoon rather than a night. The single constraint is the obvious one: the booking has to finish before the room stops being yours. Count backwards from the hour the key goes back, allow for the two of you to be dressed and out rather than for the session to end at the exact minute, and place the booking inside that. A session that runs past a hand-back is not a session anybody enjoys the last twenty minutes of.

One hour, made dense rather than long

Turnaround afternoons rarely have three hours in them once travel and the key hand-back are counted. What they do have is one solid hour, and there is a format built for exactly that. Four hand massage puts two therapists on one guest, with the hour billed for both, and it does not lengthen the hour so much as fill it. The body stops being able to predict where the next contact is coming from, which is a faster route out of a travel day than any amount of pressure. Where both of you want the afternoon rather than one, the booking becomes a therapist each, two sessions running side by side and closing together. Both need more notice than a single therapist, because two women have to be free for the same hours.

The cases, and why they matter more today

On any other day the luggage is an irrelevance. On a turnaround day it is the first thing to sort out, because two large cases open on the floor of a compact room remove exactly the space two therapists need. Most couples have already left them in a store behind reception, which solves it completely. Where the store was full, or where the cases came back up with you because something was needed, shut them and put them against a wall before she arrives, or say so in the thread and the arrangement is adjusted before the hour is fixed rather than discovered at the door. One therapist manages in a room with clear floor on one side. Two want clear floor on both.

What not to book on a day with a boarding time in it

Anything that ends in a rinse. Nuru needs a flat surface, generous towels and a shower afterwards that cannot be hurried, and a day room handed back at five is the wrong setting for it. Soapy starts in the bathroom, takes longer than people expect and depends entirely on what the room came with. Both are proper bookings on a night ashore with nothing after them, and the page on the evening after a cruise is where they belong. On a turnaround afternoon the list is oil work, sensual work, body to body and four hands, all of which leave a room exactly as it was found and need nothing from the bathroom at all.

Timing it against a boarding window rather than a clock

Boarding is usually given as a window rather than a time, and the window is wider than it sounds. A couple told to board between two and five in the afternoon has considerably more slack than a couple told to be at the quay at one. Work out which of those you have before choosing the hour, because the second case makes an afternoon booking difficult and the first makes it straightforward. Arrival is forty to sixty minutes to any central address once the hour is agreed, which is the same window on a Tuesday afternoon as on a Saturday night. Nothing is added for the hour of the day and nothing is charged for her journey inside the ring.

Deposits on a same-day afternoon

Most turnaround bookings are arranged in advance, because the date is known as soon as the itinerary is, and a booking made more than twenty-four hours ahead carries half the fee in advance. Every booking with two therapists carries it as well, whatever the notice, and so does the first booking anyone makes with the house. That covers nearly every request on this page. The one exception is narrow and worth stating precisely: a client the house has looked after before, at an address inside the city, asking for one or two hours later the same day, pays the whole figure on arrival and sends nothing beforehand. Where it is called off while she is still at home, nothing whatever is owed. Called off once she is already crossing the city, it costs the part of the fee her journey represents and nothing beyond it.

Writing it, ideally before the day itself

A turnaround date is in the itinerary from the moment it is issued, so there is no reason to leave the message until the morning. Give the date, the hours the day room is yours, the district, the length and whether it is one therapist or two. Say that it is a turnaround afternoon, because it changes what gets suggested. The reply names who is free for those hours, gives the figure and gives the arrival window. Where the day room has not been arranged yet, the booking can still be agreed in outline and the address added to the same thread once it exists. The questions page covers the awkward cases and the roster is where to look if a name matters more than an hour.