Why the afternoon diary is still open on Friday
Guests who cannot have both the name and the hour nearly always keep the hour and give up the name, which is the wrong half to hold on to. Here is why that is so.
Two things arrive in most booking threads: an hour and a name. When they cannot both be had, the guest nearly always keeps the hour and gives up the name. Watched from inside the thread across a few hundred requests, that is the wrong way round more often than not, and the reason is simply that evenings are scarce in a way afternoons are not.
The shape of a week
Requests for a weekend evening start arriving early in the week and keep arriving. By Thursday, Friday and Saturday evening are largely spoken for across the roster. Sunday evening holds out a little longer. Weekday evenings fill more slowly but they still fill, and they fill from the popular names outward.
Afternoons behave differently. They are asked for by a much smaller group, chiefly people whose evenings are committed and people who have worked out that they prefer them, and that group writes with less warning. The practical result is that two o'clock on a Saturday is frequently available on the Friday, sometimes on the Saturday morning, at a point when nine that evening has been gone for three days.
Which half to keep
If you have read a profile and decided on a particular woman, the name is the part that is genuinely hard to substitute. The hour is not: a free afternoon on a short trip can usually absorb a two o'clock booking as easily as an eight o'clock one, and often more easily, because the evening had something in it anyway.
So when the reply says that the hour you asked for is not available and tells you who is free, there is a second question worth asking before you pick from that list, which is whether the woman you wanted is free at another hour that day. Quite often she is, and it is in the afternoon.
Peak dates make this sharper
On King's Day, during Pride, across the Amsterdam Dance Event, in the run from Christmas into the new year, or in a week when a large conference has taken the city, the evening does not just fill early, it fills completely. Those are the dates where an afternoon is not merely the easier option but frequently the only one, and they are also the dates where getting across the centre after six is slow enough to matter to the arrival window.
They carry one other consequence worth knowing in advance: on a peak date half the figure travels first on every booking, including a same-day hour from a guest the house already knows, which would otherwise be settled entirely at the door. The figure itself does not change. There is no peak surcharge anywhere in this network.
Writing ahead without over-planning
The sensible window for a trip is the first day of it. Write on the Monday for the Wednesday and you have the whole roster in front of you; write on the Wednesday for the Wednesday and you have whoever the week has left. If your dates are known before you fly, earlier still is fine, and a booking arranged that far ahead simply follows the ordinary rule about half travelling first.
A run of afternoons across a trip can be arranged in one message, which is easier on a diary than four separate requests landing on four different days. Each afternoon remains its own booking at its own figure, and the deposit rule is read against each one. Ask at the start of the trip rather than on the third day, because by the third day the answer has usually changed.
A run of afternoons instead of one
Guests on a four day trip sometimes want the same hour on more than one day, and it is easier to arrange in a single message at the start than as three separate requests across the week. A diary can absorb a block of three afternoons agreed on Monday far more readily than three last-minute asks landing on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday evenings.
Each afternoon remains its own booking at its own figure, and the deposit rule is read against each one separately rather than against the run as a whole. There is no discount for taking several, and there is no penalty either. The advantage is entirely practical: you get the name you wanted on all three days rather than on the first one, and the hours are held before anybody else asks for them.