Hot tubs come in a variety of building materials, water care systems and levels of quality. It used require a lot of maintenance many years ago when most hot tubs were built using wood cabinets. The amount of maintenance on those were similar to what you’d need to do for a deck. Today, with synthetic materials, maintenance is minimal if any at all. As for water care, it will depend on your exact system. Salt water hot tub systems tend to require less maintenance and chemicals while standard systems still are fairly easy to deal with. You’ll end up spending as little as 5 minutes a week on pH balancing and checking the sanitizer and 15 minutes a month on rinsing out filters. Some filters can even be ran in a dishwasher. Often you can get away with draining and refilling your spa about once a year. With more traditional water care systems it might require this process a few more times per year.