Abstract: The study of tourist resources as public goods has been a topic that draws wide attention in Geography in western world. Along with the market reform over 30 years, the management of state-owned resources in China has manifested itself some unique characteristics. The reform of mineral resources management is reshaping the hot spring destinations in mainland China. In the last two decades, a number of studies have examined the ambiguous property rights of tourism resources. Few lights, however, are shed on the implication of resource reform upon hot spring destination in China. Taking Conghua hot spring resort as an example, this paper mainly targets on the analysis of geographical features as well as the underlying operating mechanism of state-owned resources. By adopting qualitative approach which includes field survey and semi-structured interviews, the main findings of the paper are as follows. First, it is found that the spread of hot spring tourist facilities is based on the over-use of the hot spring resource. Such abuse of hot spring resources has already resulted in geothermal resource shrinking. The low-efficient development of the hot spring resources in Conghua is due to the low price made by informal oligopoly and extra profit that can be gained from hot spring tourism. If the exploitation rights of hot spring resources were controlled by multiple semi-public enterprises, the local hot spring resources would become 'the Commons'. In pursuit of the maximization of personal benefit, the over-exploitation of state-owned resources is inevitable. Under such condition, the local government loses the control of the development of resources and has been put into the dilemma. On the one hand, it has been criticized by its upper supervision government. On the other, when local government endeavors to clarify the property rights and implement unified management, this innovation is constrained by the top-down administrative system.