Arrivals
Arrivals: ten formats and one ladder of figures
There is one ladder of figures on this site and it does not move. What changes from one booking to the next is the shape of the evening: how long it runs, whether anybody leaves the building, whether there are two of you or two of her, and whether it finishes before an alarm goes off at four.
These ten pages set out those shapes. Each one says plainly what it involves, what it does not, and how much notice the desk needs to put it together out here. The figures themselves live on rates and the women are in the line-up. Saskia answers the messages.
Ten formats on the board
Hotel room visits
Nearly everything this desk arranges has the same simple shape. You are already in a room, inside the perimeter or five minutes outside it, and a companion comes to you. Nothing has to be reached,...
Read itDinner date companionshipDinner between flights
Dinner at an airport is a matter of timing rather than taste. The food on the northern row is better than its reputation and the problem is never the menu, it is that the kitchens close while you...
Read itOvernight companionshipOvernights
An overnight removes the only genuinely irritating part of an airport evening, which is the hour when somebody has to put a coat back on. She arrives while the evening is still an evening, and she...
Read itGirlfriend experience companionshipGirlfriend experience
The phrase gets used carelessly, so here is what it means at this desk. An evening with no performance in it. She arrives and behaves like someone who is pleased to see you rather than someone...
Read itTravel companionshipTravel companion
Some guests arrive at this airport and some leave through it with somebody. A travel booking is a companion who is on the itinerary rather than waiting at the other end of it: the lounge, the...
Read itBusiness event companionshipBusiness evenings
The hotels around this airport run on business. Conference floors, badge lanyards at breakfast, and whole corridors let to the same firm for six weeks at a time. A working evening here is either a...
Read itDuo companionshipTwo companions
Some evenings are better with four people at the table than two. A dinner where you are hosting a colleague, a celebration that deserves a fuller table, a long night in a hotel that would...
Read itCompanionship for couplesFor couples
A fair number of the messages this desk gets are written by two people rather than one. A couple travelling together with an evening to fill, a pair living out here on a long posting, or two...
Read itNight out companionshipNight out
Heathrow is not a night out and nobody should pretend otherwise. The kitchens close early, the bars thin by eleven, and between the terminals and the hotel row there is no street to walk down. A...
Read itExtended booking companionshipExtended stays
Not everybody at this airport is passing through it. A good share of the messages come from people who have been in the same hotel since Monday and will be there again next week, and from...
Read itReading a format page
Every page below follows the same order. What the format is, where it works at this airport and where it does not, what it costs from the published ladder, who tends to take it, and what happens when a flight slides. Nothing on any of them is explicit, because nothing on offer here is. The fee buys her time and her company, and that is the whole description of the service.
Two of them need reading with particular care. Two companions is about a pair arriving for one social evening, and couples is about two adults booking company together. Neither page offers anything beyond company, and neither implies it.
What the airport does to each of them
Nobody lives inside the perimeter fence. Every companion travels out from central London and her journey sits inside the booked hours, which sets the floor at three for anything at the airport or the hotels around it.
It also decides which formats travel well. A hotel call, an overnight and a long unhurried evening all work out here. A night out means leaving the perimeter, because the terminals go quiet by eleven, and a dinner wants a kitchen still open at nine.
Notice, format by format
An hour is usually enough for a call at a central building, more for the airport hotels at the western end or a village address with no station near it. A pair, a couples evening or a trip away wants a day or two, because two diaries have to agree rather than one.
The exception is a late arrival, which wants a flight number instead of a clock time. Send that and she leaves town while you are on approach. Rosa and Tina both take short notice work, and the desk will say when the honest answer is tomorrow.
Where every format starts
One message with three things in it: the hotel in full, the night, and how many hours you are holding. The reply names who is free, when she can be at your door, and which line of the ladder it sits on.
Nothing else is asked until she arrives. How a confirmation works is on booking. Adults aged 18 and over only, and the fee is handed to her in person at the door.