Bohopo, a Cyprus-based hotel investment firm founded in 2022, currently operates eight boutique hotels and has three in development across five European cities: Athens, Brussels, Milan, Paris and Porto. The platform targets a sweet spot of 20 to 50 rooms per property, co-founder and CEO Minas Terlidis told CoStar News Hotels.

The company specializes in repositioning small, often underused buildings — conversions from offices or existing hotels — into service-light boutique properties. "People increasingly want to stay in the heart of a city, in something with intimacy, rather than in a large, standardized hotel," Terlidis said.

Why 20 to 50 rooms?

The 20- to 50-room range opens up more acquisition candidates than larger formats, according to Terlidis. Most well-located European boutique hotels remain in private hands, many family-owned, and require renovation. "The older generation often lacks the appetite to reinvest, and the next generation frequently does not want to run a hotel, so there is a steady pipeline of motivated sellers," he said.

Institutional investors typically cannot acquire these hotels one by one: ticket sizes are too small. Smaller buyers face financing, expertise and platform constraints. "The fundamentals, prime urban real estate and tourism-supported cash flow are strong, but the market is fragmented and hard to access," Terlidis said.

What does clustering change?

Bohopo does not pursue single large assets; it builds clusters of small hotels in the same city. The strategy delivers three layers of diversification:

• Geographic: balancing higher-growth markets such as Athens and Porto with mature, lower-volatility markets such as Paris and Milan.
• Intra-city: spreading across several small hotels so a localized disruption affects one asset, not the whole city position.
• Brand: each hotel carries a distinct identity appealing to different guests.

"A diversified cluster of smaller assets can be more resilient than relying on one larger property," Terlidis said.

Where is Bohopo looking next?

Bohopo's active targets include secondary French markets (Marseille, Nice, Lyon), secondary Italian markets (Verona, Turin, Genoa, Bologna) and select Central and Eastern European cities. London remains under close watch.

"London is a market we continue to monitor closely," Terlidis said. "It has the fundamentals we look for, from deep visitor demand to constrained central supply and a significant stock of smaller hotels."

"Three or four properties of 30 rooms each is a safer deployment in smaller cities than a single, over-100-room asset," he added.

How does Bohopo create asset value?

Terlidis names three levers at acquisition:

• Permitting expertise and construction execution.
• Layout optimization to maximize room count per floor plan.
• Redesign as a high-quality boutique hotel.

"Doing that well across five jurisdictions, each with its own planning, heritage and construction rules, is a real barrier for larger players," he said. "That difficulty is precisely where we believe disciplined execution can create value."

What is the financing structure?

Bohopo takes a market-by-market approach, leaning on patient equity and using debt selectively. "Having patient equity behind the platform allows us to move decisively when the right opportunity arises, while using debt selectively and prudently as assets mature," Terlidis said.

The long-term target is institutional-grade. "Ultimately, the objective is to create an institutional-grade platform that allows larger investors to access this part of the market in a disciplined, scalable way," he said.

What risk controls does the platform apply?

Terlidis, a former civil engineer, says the investment committee devotes more time to testing downside cases than to celebrating upside. "Small assets and three levels of diversification mean no single event can damage the whole portfolio," he said. A lean cost base, he added, gives the group "room to breathe when revenue softens."

Bohopo's three development hotels will move toward opening while the platform expands into secondary French and Italian cities, with London and parts of Central and Eastern Europe under active monitoring for entry.