Water-tourism integration combines the protection, development, and utilization of water resources with tourism development. It integrates resources such as water areas, aquatic ecosystems, water culture, and water conservancy projects to create high-end tourism products and services, promoting comprehensive rural revitalization and advancing common prosperity. This study employs the literature review method to examine the connotations and evolutionary trajectory of water-tourism integration, and takes the Zhejiang practice as a typical case for research. The results show that water-tourism integration presents the following challenges in advancing rural common prosperity: inadequate industrial coordination, superficial cultural exploration, excessive pressure on ecological carrying capacity, misaligned governance mechanisms, and unequal benefit distribution. Zhejiang province, a national pioneer in initiating the well-being rivers and lakes initiative, advances high-quality development of water-tourism integration through coordinated efforts in ecological preservation, cultural enrichment, market development, institutional innovation, governance enhancement, and technology empowerment. This study examines the logic of how high-quality water-tourism integration advances rural common prosperity through the dimensions of developmental attributes, community ethos, sustainability, and shared benefits. It further identifies future research priorities regarding policy recommendations, market-government synergy, performance metrics for integration, governance framework optimization, and cross-regional comparative studies.