Public telephone booths are installed on the main downtown streets. To speed up the construction of "Information Port" in
Xiamen, the Municipal Bureau of Post and Telecommunications worked out the Overall Development Plan of the Construction of Xiamen Information Port Infrastructure, the Development Plan of Xiamen City Telecommunication Networks and Xiamen Municipal Bureau of Post and Telecommunications N-ISDN Plan together to define the development direction of the city's telecommunication industry. Xiamen City has begun to install IC card Public telephone booths along the main trunks, as well as the streets which are frequently visited by tourists, and in the main tourist areas and spots, big hotels and restaurants since 1996. These booths save a lot of trouble for local citizens and tourists from home and abroad when in need of making telephone contacts. By the end of 1998, the total number of public phones had exceeded 11,000, including some 10,000 toll ones scattered in the streets and Lanes; some 600 slot ones along the main lines of communications, in hotels and restaurants, airports, stations and bus stops, quays, tourist areas and spots, markets and shops; some 1000 IC card telephones are installed in major tourist areas and scenic spots, Airport and Railway Station, quays, hotels and the streets where tourists are relatively concentrated.
More than eighty per cent of tourist hotels, travel agencies in Xiamen City have booking networks providing accommodation reservations and tourist services to both touring parties and individual travelers by means of telephone or fax. Seventy tourist hotels in Xiamen have computerized-fax and telephone reservation networks to serve individual tourists and forty-five travel agencies have computer, fax and telephone reservation networks to provide tourist services to individual tourists. Xiamen Chunhui Travel Agency and Xiamen Foreign Trade Travel Agency are capable of accepting reservations from individual travelers via Internet.