Facilities management is somewhat underdeveloped in Italy and the outsourced market is much smaller than other European countries with similar GDP and population size, such as the UK and France. Growth has been modest but steady in recent years, but the recovery from COVID-19 will see an accelerated CAGR for the period 2020 to 2025.
Meanwhile, with FM services commoditizing and organic growth hard to find, companies need to innovate to keep growing and remain profitable. The industry will continue to move toward service integration and sophisticated advisory services focused on business productivity and sustainability, and M&A activities will continue.
Meanwhile, COVID-19 is having a severe effect on all customer sectors. The Italian FM market saw a revenue drop of 7.8% in 2020 due to the pandemic. The market will return to growth in 2021, but will not reach 2019 levels until late 2021 or early 2022.
Healthcare, government, and education will be the fastest-growing customer segments during the forecast period. Meanwhile, hard (technical) services will outstrip soft (support) services in terms of revenue growth. There are opportunities for companies that target the highest growth services and sectors, but there are also significant challenges for those that fail to adapt. Meanwhile, collaboration and partnership are increasingly critical as technology and new business models disrupt the Italian market.
