This study investigated the performance of lodging and specialty real estate investment trusts (REITs) over a 11-year period from January 2007 to December 2017. The results of the study indicated that, overall, specialty REITs companies outperformed the market portfolio, which was not the case for lodging REITs' performance compared to the market portfolio. In terms of comparison with specialty REITs, lodging REITs performed significantly differently based on firm size, profitability, and leverage ratio.