Operationalising India’s Model Adventure Tourism Safety Framework: International Lessons for State Regulation and Enforcement

India’s Model Adventure Tourism Safety Framework (MATSF), issued in May 2026, contains an ambitious template for operator registration, safety audit, insurance, competence, incident reporting, environmental compliance and penalties. Yet a model document does not by itself create enforceable duties across states and Union Territories. This paper investigates the regulatory translation problem: how can MATSF be converted into valid, proportionate and auditable state-level regulation? It uses structured comparative legal-policy analysis of MATSF, India’s 2018 Safety and Quality Norms for Adventure Tourism, the National Air Sports Guidelines 2023, the New Zealand adventure-activities regulations and audit standard, the United Kingdom Adventure Activities Licensing regime, the Australian Adventure Activity Standard and instruments of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS). Eighteen regulatory features were coded, including legal force, scope, operator entry, risk classification, audit, auditor oversight, inspection, competence, incident notification, sanctions, appeals, public registers and transitional support. Policy-transfer theory, regulatory governance and responsive regulation guide interpretation. The comparison shows that MATSF has broad substantive coverage but requires a clearer adoption vehicle, controlled activity codes, risk-based authorisation classes, accreditation boundaries, auditor surveillance, inspection protocols, graduated sanctions and measurable implementation indicators. The 2018 guidelines should not be displaced; they should be modernised into auditable activity schedules beneath MATSF, while BIS/ISO standards should support conformity without replacing the regulator’s public-law responsibility. The paper proposes a five-stage State Adoption and Enforcement Architecture and an implementation scorecard. It concludes that credible implementation depends less on declaring MATSF mandatory than on constructing a legally coherent chain from rule-making to authorisation, verification, correction, sanction and review. The study contributes a transferable regulatory-design approach for converting national adventure tourism policy into enforceable, proportionate and measurable state-level regulation.

Adventure Tourism Regulation, Model Adventure Tourism Safety Framework, Policy Transfer, State Regulation and Safety Audit.

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