After the last economic crisis, many scholars in hospitality have studied the determinants of hotel performance and hotel responses to the crisis. However, little attention is paid to the performance recovery of different hotels. To fill the gap, this paper examines the impact of hotel characteristics on RevPAR performance recovery after the 2008 Great Recession, based on a comprehensive hotel level dataset. Two measures are introduced to describe hotel recovery: recovery ratio and recovery period. From the two perspectives, the study finds that economy hotels, franchisor and third party operated properties, and establishments in top market are types associated with fast recovery, while airport hotels and owner self-operated hotels are linked with slow recovery. The results also show that number of rooms is negatively related to recovery performance.