New Atura Blacktown (Sydney, Australia) has a feature that guests might skip past when they walk into their rooms for the first time. The property features Australia’s first installation of the world’s first invisible door lock crafted by VingCard Elsafe.

Known as Essence by Vingcard, the lock encases all electronic components inside the door itself to make the access devices practically invisible to hotel guests, apart from a colour blended-in indicator on the door above the handle.
Atura Hotels’ Director of Operations and Development, Geoffrey York, says the locks are a great fit with the hotels’ industrial warehouse-style design.

“The moment I was introduced to the Essence by VingCard lock, I was struck by the minimalistic design and I realised that it would help the Atura hotel perfectly fitting into our urban industrial, art inspired ‘edgy designed’ guest rooms,” he said.
“Essence has allowed us to create a clean design in our hallways, giving it a modern sophistication that is simply unmatched by any other hotel in Australia,” York said.

VingCard Elsafe’s General Manager for Oceania, Julian M Good, said hotel door locks have “long posed a challenge to hotel design professionals tasked with blending the locking hardware into the hotel décor”.

“Lock manufacturers have made strides in recent years by minimising the hardware and incorporating new technologies such as RFID and NFC, but visible card readers had remained on the door exterior, giving hotels a distinctly commercial feel in the hallway,” he said.

Good said Essence by VingCard solves that dilemma, by “hiding the locking components from the user and allowing designers to align the guestroom doors with the current trend toward a more residential look in hotel design, without compromising security in any way”.