Rural tourism serves as a crucial pathway to realizing rural revitalization and fostering high-quality rural development. To enhance the quality of rural tourism development, this study focuses on 124 key rural tourism villages in Central China. Employing Geodetector, it quantifies the impact of various influencing factors on the spatial distribution of these villages. Additionally, a comprehensive advantage model is constructed to evaluate the overall advantage of rural tourism in Central China. Furthermore, a coupled coordination model is devised, integrating the distribution of key villages and comprehensive advantages to assess the coordinated development effects of these villages. The findings reveal that: 1) Key villages for rural tourism in Central China exhibit a clustered distribution with multiple cores, influenced significantly by various factors, with notable synergistic effects among them. 2) Analysis of comprehensive advantage degree indicates that the overall performance of rural tourism development advantages in Central China ranks as follows: Henan Province > Hubei Province > Hunan Province. This trend correlates closely with the spatial distribution of key villages, with the coupling coordination type positively correlated with the comprehensive advantage degree. 3) The development advantages of key rural tourism villages in Central China are constrained by the coordination effects among various factors. Resource endowment emerges as the primary consideration for village selection, while transportation conditions are vital for sustainable development. This study furnishes theoretical underpinnings and practical insights for enhancing rural tourism innovation, quality, and industrial upgrading.