Another major hotel in Osaka will cease business soon.

The operator of Osaka Kokusai Hotel in Chuo Ward, which opened in 1951 as a symbol of the city's reconstruction from the devastation of World War II, announced earlier this week that it has given up renovating the aged structure amid the ongoing recession.

Earlier this month, International Dojima Hotel in the city's Dojima business district announced it had gone under with 42 billion yen in debts.

The International Fair Association, a semipublic organization affiliated with the Osaka Prefectural Government, which has run Osaka Kokusai Hotel, said it will shut down at the end of March after 48 years of service.

Accumulated debts for fiscal 1998 are expected to exceed 2.2 billion yen, it said. The nine-story hotel has 291 guest rooms.

The inn's business started to decline in 1993 when a number of major hotel chains entered the market here with new establishments. Although the semipublic operator considered privatizing the business, the recession forced it to give up the plan, officials said.

The prefecture is considering plans that include purchasing the hotel for around 5 billion yen and selling it to a private business. The local government is also looking into mapping out a new land utilization plan for the site, the officials said.

The prefecture will submit a final plan to the assembly next month, they said.

The association was founded after the war by the prefecture and local businesses as a vehicle to promote the city's postwar trade. The prefecture currently holds about 26 percent of the total investments of the semipublic organization.