Abstract:Scientific evaluation of rural tourism competitiveness is the basis for promoting healthy competition and achieving sustainable development of rural tourism. This paper takes eight cities of Wanjiang City Belt as the research object, uses niche theory to construct a comprehensive evaluation system of rural tourism competitiveness, which includes five dimensions ranging from resource endowment, industrial development, market location, foundation support and comprehensive management,then uses least squares optimization model combining subjective and objective comprehensive evaluation method to calculate the niche intensity and overlap of rural tourism competitiveness. The results show that the niche intensity of rural tourism competitiveness in Wanjiang City Belt is quite different,due to resource endowment and industrial development dimension.There is a four levels distinct hierarchy of rural tourism competitiveness between cities. The niche overlap degree of rural tourism competitiveness is high, which reveals that the competition is very fierce. Based on this, the article finally puts foward rural tourism competitiveness promotion strategy for the cities in Wanjiang City Belt.