The paper aims to explore the determinants of summer tourist spending per day in the field of alpine destination. The relevance of this reflection is linked, on one hand, to the importance that this kind of tourism plays for all the European countries located close to the Alps area and, on the other, to the increasing difficulties that these destinations meet in order to attract summer tourists. Understanding the key factors able to influence the average tourist spending could help these territories for both developing a more effective client segmentation and to develop new product more customer focused. These actions can increase the value generated and maintained by the alpine destinations. The paper reports the findings of an empirical research carried out during the summer 2010 in Alta Valtellina, an alpine Italian region located in the north.