Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
Thank you. (Operator Instructions) Your first question is from the line of Chris Woronka with Deutsche Bank.
Chris Woronka - Deutsche Bank
Good morning, guys. I was hoping you can maybe just give us a little bit more color on the forward bookings number you put in the pres release. I know first quarter was not a great business environment. I am just kind of curious as to how those bookings fell, maybe if you seen any changes subsequent to the end of the quarter? Thanks.
Colin Reed
You take it and I will jump in.
David Kloeppel
Yeah, Chris, as we describe on our call back in February, we are really reoriented our sales force and adjusted our deployment and adjusted our thinner program just open the margin shorter term bookings. And so as a result, we are not as focused on booking kind of four years out and beyond kind of bookings because as we look right now, not intend where the need is then '11 and '12 phase is had an attractive rate relative to where we are for '09 and '10.
So, as you look at the bookings and you see the bookings are down, our gross basis about 35% that decline for 2009, 2010 were basically flat for '09 on a gross basis and we are up a little bit for '10 on a gross basis. The declines in bookings really for those out years four year down and beyond but we’ve also seen as during the quarter, if you look at January, February, March we had a steady improvement as we compare ourselves January February March of last year and those gross and net bookings each month. So January was a very, very difficult month. February got marginally better, March got marginally better on a gross or net basis. So, we’re seeing slow signs of improvement as we’ve gone through the year.
Colin Reed
Yeah, I will just add a little bit of earning total to support what David just said. Over the last month and half, I spent a lot of my time with the customers meet the requirements, and trying to figure out in their minds what is -- when are they going to stop moving the customers back into our establishments and the problem has been, Chris over the last four-five months, corporations have just been absolutely frightened about how bad this economic mark down can get. And what meeting planners are telling me is businesses are going to change their behavior prospectively, they are going to meet, they believe it's an important thing to make, and that all of these meeting planners and their clients are looking for signs of stabilization.
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