Brad Brewer spotted that Google's Knowledge Graph box for a city search now may show a hotel booking link in the knowledge graph box.
He posted this on Google+ saying "A new option to see hotel average rates by rating, or select view hotels to trigger a [city + state + hotels] Google Search query."
Indeed, try searching for [nyc] and up will come a line that reads "Hotels: 3-star averaging $170, 5-star averaging $440. View hotels" If you click on the view hotels link, you are taken to a search result set for [new york city hotels] that brings up the Google Travel hotel search box at the top of the search results.
Here is a picture, click on it for the full size version:
Forum discussion at Google+.
