  We present geometric numerical integrators for contact flows that stem from a
discretization of Herglotz' variational principle. First we show that the
resulting discrete map is a contact transformation and that any contact map can
be derived from a variational principle. Then we discuss the backward error
analysis of our variational integrators, including the construction of a
modified Lagrangian. Throughout the paper we use the damped harmonic oscillator
as a benchmark example to compare our integrators to their symplectic
analogues.
