2.3. Market segment
The breakdown of turnover by market segment shows the development of the sector in terms of activity.
Over the last decade, the share of office cleaning has shown a trend slightly downwards as a result of
the diversification of activities towards integrated services and facility management such as industrial
cleaning (including the hygiene of food chains), specialised cleaning services (hospital cleaning, etc.),
façades and window-cleaning, cleaning of public transport, cleaning of schools, etc.. These services
represented almost half the sector’s turnover (47%) in 2006 [3]. They all involve the use of sophisticated
equipment as well as specific training for employees. However, office cleaning was the core activity of
the cleaning companies in 2003, representing 55%8
of the total turnover (Table 3), and still represented
the represents the main activity of the cleaning market in Europe in 2006 [3]