Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport offers travellers plenty of pleasures to while away their time in between flights: tax free shopping, fine dining, relaxing massages, casino gambling, even high-brow art. Now they can also enjoy the services offered by hookers.

Most of them, newspaper De Telegraaf reports, come from Eastern Europe and do their dealings in the international area just past customs.

Low-cost
To travel to Schiphol, the women buy cheap tickets offered by budget airlines so they can still make a profit. They then descend on bored passengers with enough time to kill and money to spend. Depending on the service agreed, they take them to toilets or one of two hotels in the international area.

Travel expenses
Some women fly up and down on the same day, a KLM spokesperson who wishes to remain anonymous tells the paper. Their expenses are apparently offset by their takings.

Though soliciting is illegal, border police have yet to act, since they can only intervene when someone is caught red-handed or a complaint is filed.

These women “can earn lots of money, much more than in their own countries”, says the Amsterdam prostitution association.

Arrangements
The association has no information on the rates the women ask for their services, though it suspects they are in the hundreds of euros, far more than registered prostitutes working in Amsterdam’s red-light district. There are two likely scenarios, according to the association:

“A man of means, say a businessman, orders a girl from Eastern Europe and pays her flight. Or she comes to Amsterdam on her own initiative, paying for her own flight and possibly for the hotel too.”

The association has no objections against hookers expanding their activities to Amsterdam’s stylish airport.

“But we do have a problem if the girl is forced to work there by a pimp or people trafficker. But if they are enterprising enough to tap this lucrative market on their own, we’re all for it. A word of warning, though: girls operating privately are always more vulnerable.”

(cl/hs)

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