The Development and Structure of a Marketing Plan: Towards the Development of Marketing Strategies 1. The Situation Analysis In the planning process there are steps that must be taken prior to the development of the marketing strategies; the first one is conducting a situation analysis. A situation analysis is ?the overall process of collecting and interpreting internal, competitive and environmental information.? It presents a summary of these environments and summarizes the company?s current marketing objectives and performance in the market. Through the situation analysis business is provided with a systematic way of viewing marketing activities by analysing the customer, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) in relation to the competition. The situation analysis according to Gartrell includes internal, external and customer analyses, also known as the product, position, and prospect analyses. The prod webdesign uct analysis includes a review of the current objectives, strategies, and company performance. Product capabilities are examined as well as the limitations of the tourist product. The whole destination and its facilities are examined to determine what is there to be offered to the potential traveller. This analysis eliminates poor performance since through this the marketing goals and objectives are reassessed in order to determine their effectiveness. Second is the position analysis, which addresses issues such as how the destination is ?perceived? by the market, an analysis of the strength and weakness and how these can be compared to the threats and opportunities in the external environment, as well as the previous success of the destination shown in statistical reports. Also, the position of the destination in relation to the marketplace, the competitors? products, services and their position in the market are examined.