Abstract: Rural tourism destinations constitute the core spatial carriers of rural tourism activities. An examination of their spatial distribution characteristics and influencing factors is essential for optimizing regional rural tourism layouts and advancing high quality development. Focusing on rural tourism destinations in the Beijing Tianjin Hebei region, this study applies the Standard Deviational Ellipse, Kernel Density Estimation, and Geodetector to analyze spatial distribution characteristics and their driving mechanisms. Rural tourism destinations in the region display a wide range of types and a clear southwest to northeast orientation in spatial distribution. Along this axis, slight shifts are observed in the distribution centers of both the overall destinations and different destination categories. The spatial pattern is uneven and marked by significant agglomeration, with the overall agglomeration level exceeding that of individual categories. Among different types, cultural historical destinations exhibit a higher degree of agglomeration than natural landscape and industrial convergence destinations. Results from single factor detection indicate that all factors exert positive influences on spatial distribution, and their explanatory power follows a consistent order. Socio economic factors play a dominant role, followed by tourist source potential, while natural environmental factors show a comparatively weaker effect. Dual factor interaction detection identifies factor enhancement and nonlinear enhancement effects, with interaction strength exhibiting a gradient transition from strong to relatively strong and then to moderate. Further mechanism analysis suggests that the observed spatial pattern emerges from the combined effects of the natural environment, socio economic conditions, and tourist source potential. The natural environment provides the basic spatial foundation, socio economic conditions reinforce the spatial configuration, and tourist source potential underpins sustained development.