Forty-five hotel massage therapists, and the rooms they work in

The cards above show you a face, a language or two, and the districts someone covers. They cannot show you the thing a hotel guest most wants to know, which is what the hour in the room will feel like. The profiles, written in each woman's own terms, come closer.

Photographs

Every photograph is of the person on whose profile it appears, taken with her agreement. When someone leaves the roster her profile and pictures come down.

Choosing someone

Guests do this two ways and both are sound. Some read every profile and arrive at a name of their own. Others send three lines, the hotel district, the length, the shape of the evening, and ask for two or three profiles to read. The second is not the lazy version of the first: a short conversation can point you towards the pages that fit a room with colleagues sleeping on either side of it, or a guest who has not slept since Singapore. The choice is yours, and the booking is hers to accept.

Everyone on the roster is twenty-one or over, but that is a fact about a list rather than a reason to pick one person over another. Describe the evening, and the reply will suggest where to start reading.

Languages spoken by the hotel massage therapists on the roster

Every therapist on the roster speaks English, and for most of them it is the second or third language of a working life spent between countries. Seven also speak French, six Russian and six Spanish, while Dutch, Portuguese and Italian are each spoken by three; German, Greek, Polish and a handful of other languages are covered by at least one. Cricket speaks Dutch alongside English, and Claire moves easily between French, German and English. If the language matters more to you than the name, say so, and the suggestions start from that.

Where they live

The roster lives in the city rather than travelling in from outside it: thirteen therapists are based in Centrum, ten in De Pijp, and eleven each in the Jordaan and Oud-Zuid. That spread is the practical reason forty to sixty minutes is a realistic arrival figure anywhere in the centre, at noon or at four in the morning. It also means a hotel in the south is often closest to someone from Oud-Zuid or De Pijp, and a canal-house room to someone from the Jordaan or the old centre.

Booking the same therapist again

Guests who come back to Amsterdam often ask for the woman they saw on the last trip, and that is the simplest booking there is: her name, the hotel area and the hour. Because her availability is hers to set, a request made a day ahead has a better chance than one sent at midnight. If she is not free, you are told so before anything is fixed, and you choose someone else, pick another hour, or leave it there.

Pairs who work together

For four hands at your hotel, many guests ask for two therapists who already work as a pair, so the timing and the sequence are familiar to both of them before they reach your floor. Mention the room type when you write, so the reply can say honestly whether two will fit.