Last week, I got an email from Virgin Atlantic (one of the ones you get when you sign up for their electronic notifications) inviting me to play a pinball game. I checked it out. It wasn’t a contest or anything, just a game to play online. This week I checked out a new Sheraton Web site, SheratonPlay.com. It’s got a new interactive game called Pillowfight, which joins one called Splash. Again, really nothing to it except frittering away some time, although the Sheraton game lets you play along with other visitors to the site. This is all part of the more social-networky spin Sheraton has given to its site revamp in the last year. When Web sites do things like allowing users to post their hotel reviews and photos, etc., the basic reason is to promote brand loyalty. The underlying reason–which is a big reason for adding games–is to develop the metric known as “time on site,” which is valuable to advertisers. Or to the brand itself. The whole time you’re playing one of these games, you’re also looking at the company’s logo, and probably more of its information too. I think that in the travel industry, a third factor comes into play, and it’s one that travelers need to be more concerned about: the appeal to the underlings, if I may be so rude, who do your travel research or booking. If you don’t let your staff play Internet games during work time, you might want to be aware that time they’re spending at the Virgin, Sheraton or other sites — if your company tracks such things in its computer logs– may not be that they’re checking fares or comparing prices, but just playing. –Mary Hunt, editor, eFlyer