False bookings at hotels, and what follows

Picture the evening from the other side of the door. A therapist crosses a lobby she has never seen, rides to the sixth floor and knocks on a room that turns out to belong to a sleeping family, or on a door nobody was ever going to open. That is a false booking, and it is treated as something quite separate from a cancellation.

What counts

• A name that belongs to nobody.
• A phone number or profile borrowed from a real person without their knowledge.
• A request placed as a joke or a dare.
• A guest who was never going to answer the door, and knew it when he booked.

A guest whose plans genuinely changed is not in this category. His situation is an ordinary cancellation, handled under the cancellation policy.

What follows

The house keeps a record of the reservation and of every identifier used to make it. Those identifiers go to other reputable Amsterdam houses, so that a name or number already known reaches their therapists before it reaches a lobby. If circumstances warrant it, a report goes to the relevant authorities. Whether or not a deposit changed hands makes no difference, since avoiding one is often the point of the exercise.

Who it protects

Forty-five women make these journeys, frequently alone and frequently late, into buildings whose layouts they learn on the way up. A false reservation costs one of them an evening at the least; at worst it is a way of drawing her to a door for reasons unrelated to any booking. The record exists for them.

A guest who books under his own name, gives the right room and answers the knock never meets any of this and has no reason to think about it. The written thread is part of what keeps the category small: the WhatsApp booking entry explains how a request is checked, and privacy questions are taken up in the FAQ.