As an embodiment of high-quality development of rural tourism, the key rural tourism villages play a typical demonstration and leading role in rural tourism development, paving an important path for industry to promote rural revitalization. Taking 141 key rural tourism villages in Hunan Province as the research object, a research has been conducted on the equilibrium and agglomeration degree of key villages in different spatial scales by adopting geographical spatial analysis methods such as disequilibrium index, kernel density analysis and nearest neighbor index, followed by an inquiry into the influencing factors of spatial distribution of key villages of rural tourism in Hunan Province on the basis of grey correlation, correlation analysis and overlay and buffer analysis. The results show that the overall spatial distribution of key rural tourism villages in Hunan Province is characterized with an obvious tendency towards indigenous agglomeration, which generally presents an agglomeration trend of “primary core-secondary core-fringe area” mode. The number of key villages is evenly distributed in each city, but with a diversity in the spatial distribution types of each city - four distribution types in 14 cities. The three types of rural tourism key villages are characterized with a “two high - one low” feature, with diversity in the distribution range. The formation of spatial distribution pattern of rural key villages in Hunan Province is the result of multiple factors such as terrain and water system, traffic accessibility, tourist market, regional economy and tourism development.