Jesus heals a leper in Galilee (let's call him Bob), then asks Bob to give credit to the local priests. Jesus knows that the priests of his day hate competition - especialy if the competition gets stuff done, and even moreso if the competition does it for free.
Priests pretty much ran the show back then. They were the de facto mayor, judges and juries of small towns. Since literacy rates were appalingly low, priests were often the only people in small towns who could read and write, so their interpretation of scripture pretty much stood unchallenged. This gave them an inordinate amount of power to massage the message to their own benefit. If some guy comes rolling into town with a new interpretation of scripture and pretty much backs His up by healing folks on the spot, local priests lose their meal tickets.
Because Bob ignored Jesus's request to give it up to Galilee's priest and told everybody who healed him (including Galilee's priest), now everybody knows who to watch out for - the citizenry for help, and the other local priests for competition. Thus word will go through the local priests' grapevine about Jesus and precede His arrivals. The other local priests will have Him banned from cities as a heretic or demon, so He'll have to set up shop outside of town. Citizens will still go to see Him, however, because they knew Bob's skin used to look like moldy Swiss cheese, but now he's fine and dandy.
The net effect - Jesus and his disciples don't get to sleep in nice places. The fear was that Jesus wouldn't get to share the Word with as many people since he can't hit the major population centers, but the word of mouth basically made wherever He set up camp the new major population center, albeit temporarily.
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