This report is a desk review of the tourism sector’s policy and regulatory framework in seven countries of interest: Australia, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Malaysia, Thailand and Sri Lanka. Countries from the region were chosen to understand what strategies were implemented to increase tourism revenues. This included countries in which tourism currently contributes a significant amount to GDP, the Maldives (96 percent), Thailand (20 percent) and Malaysia (14 percent); Australia (Tourism Australia) and Sri Lanka (SLTDA) were chosen to understand the private sector involvement in the tourism institutional structure and India was chosen as it is an important neighboring country, especially for potential Sikh tourism visitors that could come to Pakistan. In addition, India has created several religious and other tourism circuits which are mostly within the country, but incipient steps are also being taken to include Sri Lanka or Nepal in these circuits. Bhutan is an interesting example of a country that has given prime importance to bringing in few but very high value tourists. The report gives an overview of the policy framework that has been used by these countries to try and develop the tourism sector. The report covers the tourism strategy plans used, the role of the private sector and foreign direct investment (FDI) to the extent this has been used. Within the regulatory framework it looks at overarching laws where they exist to regulate the tourism sector, in some cases the laws regarding foreign direct investment where they are affecting tourism investment specifically and the overall institutional structure within which the sector operates in. In addition, Visa regimes policy has been discussed generally to understand how open the countries are to tourism and what type of visas are being issued and to which countries. Last a brief look has been taken at several memorandum of understandings that have been signed to promote the tourism sector.