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Glen wants to apply strict rules to storytelling, but thank god so many novelists and filmmakers disagree! As has been said, the hotel scene serves as a motif for the mysterious, the inexplicable; and it anticipates those very qualities in Scottie's obsession with Madeleine.
On the other hand, it can be read in a more literal sense: the hotel manager is 'in on it'.
Watching it again, it strikes me that the only time the film really requires you to suspend disbelief is when Madeleine/Judy opens the Empire Hotel room door to Scottie and behaves as if she's looking at a stranger. The man she loves, the man who's at the heart of her terrible guilt, dread and longing appears to her as a common or garden creep. Yeah, right. Spotting him through the window before he ascended to her room would've solved that one; she could've prepared herself for the appropriate acting. I dunno, maybe she did. After all, we viewers are invited to fill in the gaps. (Novak has insisted that she set out in this scene to convey the ambivalence of Madeleine/Judy's emotions. Well, she didn't succeed.)
Whatever, we are suitably distracted from Judy's truly hideous green outfit by unfettered tits (a look Novak cultivated elsewhere to devastating effect). I seem to have lowered the tone. I only do so as a homage to Hitchcock, naturally.
