Two companions, one booking and one arrival time

You can name both, name one and leave the second to the desk, or describe the evening and leave both names out of it. What the desk is matching is not looks but temperament and hours: two people who enjoy the same kind of evening and can both be at your door at the same time from opposite sides of London.

That second part is the harder one out here. Most of the women travel from the centre, and a pair means two journeys landing within a few minutes of each other, which is why a day of notice is worth far more for this format than it is for any other. When you write, name the hotel, the time you want both of them at the door and whether a table is already booked, so the two journeys can be planned around one clock.

A dinner for four where a colleague or a friend is at the table and nobody is left out of the conversation at the far end. A birthday that deserves more than a hotel bar. A long night on the northern row where the second half is meant to be easy rather than intense.

The buildings help. The Bath Road row is full of large anonymous houses with long corridors and bars that stay useful after ten, and two visitors crossing a lobby there attracts exactly as much attention as one, which is none.

Bianka and Luna both work the northern row and both prefer the second half of the night to the first, which makes them easy to put together after ten. Cindy and Michelle are both in Hounslow and both treat a TW3 evening with the care of a West End one.

Milena and Karolina cover the central terminals between them and are the composed pair rather than the loud one. If you would rather pick on looks, the curvaceous and slender profiles are the quickest place to start.

They come together, in one car, at one agreed time. At a table of four the two companions sit across from one another rather than side by side, so every guest has somebody beside them and nobody drifts to the end of the conversation. It is a small thing and it makes the difference between a dinner that works and one that splits into two halves.

In a room the same logic holds. Two people who already get on will keep an evening moving; two who have never met will spend the first hour being polite, which is why the desk proposes pairs it has put together before.

One car matters more here than it sounds. Two separate arrivals at an airport hotel twenty minutes apart is the version guests imagine and nobody enjoys, because the first half hour is spent waiting rather than settling. The desk holds both journeys to the same clock and tells you one arrival time, not two.

Three hours is still the minimum at the airport, for each of them, and the travel is still inside it. A day of notice is realistic, an afternoon is sometimes possible, and the same night almost never is unless two diaries happen to be clear.

If the flight slides, both bookings slide together and the terms are the ones on booking. If only one of the two can move, the desk will say so straight away rather than letting you find out at the door, and you can take the evening with one name or move the whole thing. For a single companion instead, start at hotel room visits.