FRANKFURT, July 26 (Reuters) - The administrator of insolvent German online travel group Unister has hired Macquarie MQG.AX to find a buyer for the company operating popular sites such as flight booking platform fluege.de and package travel site ab-in-den-urlaub.de.
"We see enormous demand from investors for the Unister group or parts of it," Lucas Floether told Reuters on Tuesday.
Groups such as broadcaster ProSieben PSMGn.DE and private equity firm EQT have shown interest in Unister in two earlier sale attempts, the most recent of which collapsed in spring 2015 over valuation issues.
Unister had hoped to reap as much as 900 million euros ($990 million) from 2015's attempted sale, but recent reports in German media have suggested that it may now fetch only about 100 million euros.
The administrator said the insolvency proceedings and negative headlines had hit Unister's trading.
"But we have managed to stabilise sales despite the headlines. Booking figures have started to rise," Floether said, adding "we are not having a fire sale."
Unister, which has 1,100 staff, filed for insolvency after its founder Thomas Wagner died in a crash on a private plane on a trip back from Venice, where he had unsuccessfully tried to secure a private loan to shore up the company's finances.
($1 = 0.9088 euros)