Purpose/Significance  Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) is not only a crucial carrier of China’s fine traditional culture but also a key support for the high-quality development of rural tourism. Promoting the integrated development of ICH and rural tourism is conducive to enhancing the cultural leadership of rural areas, stimulating the economic driving force of rural areas, and strengthening the centripetal force of rural governance.

Methods/Process By adopting literature analysis, field research, and case study methods, this paper explores the contemporary value of the integrated development of ICH and rural tourism, analyzes and summarizes the practical dilemmas in this integration process, and proposes corresponding implementation paths from a point-to-area perspective.

Results/Conclusions The research shows that the current integrated development of ICH and rural tourism is confronted with practical dilemmas such as the need to further explore cultural connotations, extend industrial chains, improve talent support, and strengthen publicity and promotion. To address these issues, practical paths for the integration of ICH and rural tourism should be explored from the following aspects: deeply excavating the cultural essence of integrated development, extending the industrial chain of integrated development, strengthening talent support for integrated development, and innovating the communication matrix for integrated development.