Abstract This study aims to elucidate the factors that influence the choice of hotel booking mode, assess the impact of socio-demographic factors on categorization, and the influence of trip-related characteristics on preferences for booking channels. We investigate tourist preferences for hotel booking modes based on a sample of 11,861 tourists who visited the Maldives. Using a Finite Mixture Multinomial Logit Model (FMMNL), we identify two distinct classes of tourists.