 Why is the lack of hotel space important for Simon's story?
He looked over at Betty and said, almost as though reciting, "What I need is a vacation." "Providence," Simon told her whilst fiddling with the aspirin bottle, "will provide." The client fussed himself with Betty's assistance into the seat, bug-eyed Simon, said finally, "You know my name, that's pretty good. When Simon continued to say nothing she ventured, "Time travel is impossible." "Time travelers," she said, not very intelligently. "Then you'll realize that there are a dozen explanations of the paradoxes of time travel. It's my contention that within a century or so man will have solved the problems of immortality and eternal youth, and it's also my suspicion that he will eventually be able to travel in time. Simon seemed incapable of carrying the ball this morning, so Betty said, "But ... Mr. Oyster, if the future has developed time travel why don't we ever meet such travelers?" "The usual explanation, Betty, is that they can't afford to allow the space-time continuum track to be altered. If, say, a time traveler returned to a period of twenty-five years ago and shot Hitler, then all subsequent history would be changed. In that case, the time traveler himself might never be born. Simon said, "You want to hire me to find a time traveler and in some manner or other—any manner will do—exhort from him the secret of eternal life and youth, which you figure the future will have discovered. At a festival like this somebody with a strange accent, or who didn't know exactly how to wear his clothes correctly, or was off the ordinary in any of a dozen other ways, wouldn't be noticed. You could be a four-armed space traveler from Mars, and you still wouldn't be conspicuous at the Oktoberfest . If you could go back a few thousand years, the things you would wish to see would be a Roman Triumph, perhaps the Rites of Dionysus, or one of Alexander's orgies. "No ma'am, you'd have to stick to some great event, both for the sake of actual interest and for protection against being unmasked." You can take the plane to Munich, spend a week there and—" Simon was shaking his head. It takes roughly seven and a half hours from Gander to Shannon and I spent that time dreaming up material I could put into my reports to Mr. Oyster.
 It set the stage for him to encounter an alien's home for himself.
 It made him cut his trip short without finding any time travelers.  Simon would have to learn how to time travel in order to keep his bag from being stolen.  It set the stage for him to encounter an alien's home for himself.  It meant he would find a number of unsavory characters as he tried to find somewhere to sleep.