Over the past years, reports over brutal, racist attacks in the former eastern states of Germany have filled the headlines of German and international media again and again. Tourism authorities in these states have complained that these attacks harm their tourism figures.

The goal of this paper is to explore the manner in which reported racist attacks personally affect travelers’ decisions on traveling to the former eastern states and what reactions and strategies travelers - in this case Berlin residents - show and develop. As the research method, focus group discussions were used. Altogether, three group discussions took place in Berlin. For group-dynamic reasons, groups were made up of persons with similar backgrounds: a group with citizens from former communist East-Berlin, a group with citizens from former West-Berlin and a group with people who have immigrated to Berlin. All three groups had a similar distribution according to the demographic characteristics concerning age, gender and familial status.