The message that arrives over a late breakfast
A recognisable kind of first message lands here between ten and half past eleven, written by somebody who has just found the day emptier than they expected. It usually needs three more lines.
They arrive in a cluster, these messages, between about ten and half past eleven. Somebody has slept late, come down to a breakfast that is still being served, looked at a day with one thing in it at seven in the evening, and worked out that the next six hours belong to nobody. The message that follows is usually four words long and usually needs three more.
What a short message costs
A message that says only that somebody would like to book this afternoon gets a reply, but the reply has to be a question, and then the answer to that is a question, and forty minutes have gone before anything is actually agreed. On an afternoon where the whole point is that the time is free, forty minutes of that time spent in a back and forth is a poor trade.
Four facts settle almost anything. Where you are, meaning the building or the street, and the room number if you have it. When, given in Amsterdam time. How long, chosen from the five lengths. And whether it is one therapist or two, one guest or a couple. Add a name if you have one in mind. Five lines, written while the coffee is still there, and the reply that comes back can hold everything rather than one more question.
The Amsterdam time thing
It sounds like a joke until it happens. A phone that is still set to the city somebody flew in from is a genuinely routine source of an afternoon starting an hour late or an hour early, and the guest is never the one who notices. Write the hour out rather than saying it in terms of now, and write it in local time.
What comes back
A name, a figure and an arrival window. The window is forty to sixty minutes across central Amsterdam, counted from the moment the booking is actually agreed rather than from when the first message was sent, which is the other thing people get wrong over breakfast. Write at ten, agree at half past ten, and she is at the door between ten past and half past eleven. Write at ten, wander off for twenty minutes, agree at eleven, and the window starts then.
If the woman named in the message is not free at that hour, the reply says so and says who is free. That is where it stops. Nothing is decided on anyone's behalf and nobody is put in her place; you read the names, look at the roster again if you want, and say what you would like. A good many guests keep the name and move the hour, which is the easier of the two adjustments when the whole afternoon is open.
The deposit question, answered before it is asked
For a same-day hour or two at a city address from a guest the house has looked after before, nothing travels first and the whole figure is settled at the door. For everybody else writing at breakfast, half goes first, and the two situations that catch people out are a first booking, which always asks for it, and anything running three hours or longer, which also always does.
Card is the ordinary route, with Revolut, Wise and crypto available. The exact sum and the details for sending it appear in the thread once the hour is agreed. On a same-day booking you are also asked to write in that same thread that you want the session carried out at once, which takes a line and has a specific purpose set out on the policy page.
One more thing before you put the phone down
Go and put the sign on the handle. Right now, while you are still at the table and before you have decided what to do with the next two hours. That single act, taken at ten in the morning rather than at ten past one, is the difference between an afternoon that runs exactly as arranged and an afternoon with a knock in the middle of it.
What not to put in the first message
Nothing about what you hope the session will involve, because that is not a matter for the thread. What a session includes is hers to decide and she says so in her own words when she arrives, and a first message that tries to settle it in advance simply gets a shorter reply than it would otherwise have had.
Nothing that belongs to somebody else either: the booking is taken in the name of the person making it, from a number that belongs to them, and a booking made under anybody else's name is treated as a false booking rather than as an ordinary one. That sounds heavier than the situation warrants, and it exists to cover a handful of cases a year. A guest writing for themselves over breakfast is nowhere near it.