I'm not in US and have never set foot there ever.

But I've lived my entire life in India so far.

Most cities and towns won't do this because this affects only a handful of extremely small tourist places which are cool like have snow so they attract 80% of our 1 billion population who choose to be tourists.

I get your overall point though. But major cities just don't suffer from the same problems! Say Chennai or Mumbai or Trivendrum or Kochi or anybody else - this is simply not a problem. They don't have over tourism.

And such decisions will not be taken anywhere else in India

You have to note that Himachal or other mountain states with snow need protections. Otherwise they ll quickly lose their local traditions because the mountain snow states have extremely pleasant temperatures even in summer so rich folks from all over the country would simply buy out all the land and houses gentrification overloaded

> not staying anywhere? Or does Himachal also have laws like this?

Non-locals are allowed to stay anywhere in HP, but zoning is strictly enforced so you aren't going to find some hotel or B&B in the middle of nowhere without it being zoned as non-agricultural land.

This helps limit tourism to a handful of urban hubs, which helps limit overtourism to a handful of areas that have essentially been written off.

That said, significant swathes of Himachal fall within the Protexted Area Permit and outsiders need permission from the Home Ministry for extended stays, and often get stopped by police or ITBP for checkings (unsurprising given that we neighbor Tibet and plenty of communities have ethnic ties with residents of Ngari).

> I doubt this has been given judicial review at the High Court/Supreme Court level

Tribal Councils and Panchayats in Meghalaya are allowed to use customary law to limit outsiders, and this has been adjudicated by the Meghalaya HC as well.

Meghalaya also falls under the Sixth Schedule which was explicitly made to ensure that tribal areas aren't inundated by more numerous outside ethnic groups.

My personal opinion is less about the crowding (though that is a pain) and moreso how overtourism creates a form of Dutch disease and prevents more inclusive economic from being created.

The state in India I mentioned (Himachal Pradesh) has a large tourism industry, but because of strict zoning laws was able to reduce the overall impact of tourism and zone SEZs and industrial parks which helped MSMEs climb up the value chain in industries such as generic pharma manufacturing and food processing.

If hotel and homestay zoning was lax, there would have been less of an incentive for local capital to invest in capex heavy but ultimately higher value economic output. And it was that economic output that helped HP subsidize it's welfare system that was able to bring the state's HDI to middle of the pack Chinese province levels despite not having a single metro with population greater than 200k.