Massage at Schiphol in trade fair week, when the city hotels are full

Amsterdam's big trade fairs and medical congresses fill the city in a way that surprises first-time exhibitors. Rooms near the RAI convention centre sell out long before the show, prices climb across the canal ring, and a great many stand staff, sales teams and speakers end up sleeping in hotels near the airport instead. Their days begin with a train into the south of the city and end, ten or twelve hours later, with the same train back. A massage at Schiphol is often the one part of that week planned for their own sake.

Fair weeks count as peak dates

The house treats a large conference week as a peak date, alongside King's Day and the end of the year. That changes less than people fear. The rates stay exactly as the profiles show them. What it does mean is that the deposit of half applies to every booking that week, wherever the room is, and that the evenings fill sooner than usual because exhibitors all want the same hours. At the airport the deposit applies in any case.

Write early in the week, ideally on the first evening or the morning the stand opens, naming the nights you want. If the stand dinner or a client drink lands on one of them later, the free move covers a change to another date within fourteen days, provided you ask with more than twenty-four hours to spare.

Ten hours on your feet

Stand work is a particular kind of tiring. You stand on a thin carpet over a concrete hall floor, talk for most of the day and eat at odd moments. By the evening the legs and lower back are what hurt, and the voice is tired of conversation. Guests in fair week often ask for a session where very little needs to be said, and an hour and a half is the length most of them settle on. Sensual massage suits that evening well because it starts slowly and asks nothing of you.

Journey times in a busy week

Roads around the airport and the south of the city are heavier during a large fair, especially at the hours when the halls close. The reply to your message accounts for that when it names the journey time for the trip out, and an hour a little later than you first asked for may be suggested. Agreeing to a later hour that will actually be kept is usually better than an early one that slips.

Your colleagues on the same stand do not need to know anything about it. Each booking is its own thread, and the house never contacts anyone except the person who wrote. The journal note on conference weeks describes how those weeks feel from the other side.