The historic hotel, in the center of one of Europe's main tourist districts, needs major investment to compete with two new foreign hotels that have been opened in the city.
But no solution can be found to a dispute between city officials who want to attract foreign investors and the worker's collective who want majority control.
Kirill Boldovsky, head of the Mayor's Hotel Industry Board, said in an interview that foreign participation was "essential to developing the city's hotel industry and solving its financial crisis".
But Valentina Shchilova, the Astoria's chief accountant, said the worker's collective was committed to majority Russian ownership for the Astoria. "We want St. Petersburg to have at least one Russian-owned five-star hotel".
A Chubais decree in July ordered all involved entities to "peacefully resolve the issue", but the hotel's status remains in limbo.
A former Intourist hotel, the Astoria is considered a prime investment opportunity in a city visited by 1. 2 million foreign tourists annually but equipped with only two five-star hotels, the Hotel Grand Europe and the newly opened Nevsky Palace Hotel.
While the hotel managed occupancy rates of 100 percent in the summer, this is expected to fall steeply in the off-season.
The price of hotel rooms at the Astoria is $220 a night, roughly in line with its competitors, but the hotel also takes many Russian visitors who pay only 30, 000 rubles ($30) a night.
The hotel has half-completed a renovation carried out by a Finnish company but further investments of millions of dollars are needed to bring the hotel to five-star standard.
Confusion over who will control the enterprise, potentially worth hundreds of million of dollars, began shortly after hotel management filed privatization documents in October 1992.
In December, Mayor Anatoly Sobchak called for a bidding competition in which nine international operators and the Astoria's worker's collective would compete for operating rights.
Announcement of the tender drew interest from Marriott, Hilton, Sheraton, and others but the procedure was set back when a local court overturned Sobchak's decision in March 1993.
The Astoria workers collective then started proceedings to privatize the hotel under its own plan, registering to become a joint stock company.
But privatization minister Anatoly Chubais ruled in May 1993 that the documents were invalid because they gave special rights to local firms which were not part of the worker's collective.
The matter is now deadlocked but Shchilova said the hotel was pressing ahead with preliminary negotiations with an unnamed international hotel operator over establishing a franchise that would leave majority control in Russian hands.
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