Guide · Amsterdam · 2026-10-15
Body to body in an over-cooled Amsterdam hotel room on a summer night
The heatwave pages deal with rooms that are too hot. This one deals with the opposite summer problem, which catches out just as many guests: a modern hotel room where the air conditioning has run all day and the room is cold enough to make lying still on a towel uncomfortable. Body to body handles it well, given a little preparation.
Why summer rooms end up cold
Hotels set their cooling for guests coming in hot off the street, and housekeeping often leaves it on a low setting after cleaning. Add a vent above the bed and a room that has stood empty all afternoon, and by evening it can be several degrees cooler than anyone would pick for a massage.
The effect is easy to miss when you come in warm from a summer evening. It becomes obvious about a quarter of an hour into lying still.
Older hotels inside the canal ring rarely have this problem, since few of them were built with cooling at all. It belongs to the newer buildings near the stations, along the waterfront to the east and out towards Zuidas, where the cooling runs off a central plant and a single room has only a limited say over it. Knowing which kind of building you are in tells you which page of this site applies.
Adjusting the room before body to body
Raise the setting as soon as the hour is confirmed rather than when she knocks, because a chilled room is slow to come back up. A target a few degrees warmer than feels pleasant while you are dressed is about right.
Turn the fan speed down, or off, for the session. A strong draught across oiled skin cools it far faster than still air at the same temperature. If the vent points at the bed she can work from the other side; mention it in the thread so she knows before she arrives.
Leave a window open a crack if the room allows it and the street is quiet, so the air does not turn stale once the cooling is eased back.
Which format suits a chilled room
Warm oil and full contact suit a room that is slightly too cool, since the format makes its own warmth, and body to body sits comfortably here. A room brought up to a mild temperature also suits tantra, which needs stillness and warmth above all. Soapy suits it less, because wet skin in conditioned air chills quickly.
Arrival and timing in summer
The window is the same in July as in January: forty to sixty minutes from the confirmed hour for any central address. Summer evenings stay light until late, and many guests prefer to book after ten, when the city cools and the room has had time to settle. Once she is in, the room needs nothing more from you than a chair for her bag and the setting you already chose. If the cooling clicks back on halfway through, say so; a nudge on the panel is quicker than putting up with the draught. The heatwave page covers rooms with no cooling at all.