In this paper, a class of contractive port Hamiltonian systems is characterized. Having wide range of applications, Port Hamiltonian systems match IDA-PBC (Interconnection and Damping Assignment Passivity Based Control) framework, as a powerful design technique. Through utilization of contraction properties of port Hamiltonian systems, an approach which stems from IDA-PBC is proposed for tracker design of such systems. In the line of showing the applicability and superiority of the proposed approach, it is applied to an electromechanical system, i.e., magnetic levitation. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.