There was a time in the not-so-distant past when every big hotel needed a spa. Leisure travelers demanded it, and business travelers did, too -- to reward themselves, their clients or their employees with lavish massage and steam-filled weekends in opulent settings. No more. Today, the oversize hotel spa has pretty much gone the way of limitless credit and fancy holiday parties. According to Jeff Higley, a vice president at Smith Travel Research, a hotel research company in Hendersonville, Tenn., occupancy rates at hotels with spas fell to 62.4 percent in the first nine months of this year, from 70.8 percent in the first nine months of 2006. To compensate, many hotel spas have scaled back in size, begun offering shorter treatments and started programs to entice local clients to replace the business travelers they lost. 'What's keeping them alive is the community that books services, the locals who go there for their upkeep -- not the hotel traveler,' said Mary Bemis, the co-founder and editor in chief of Organic Spa Magazine. 'Most people who are visiting spas just want to use the fitness center and steam room rather than book a long treatment.' She noted that hotel spas were being built smaller -- from, say, 5,000 to 7,500 square feet, rather than the 35,000-square-foot behemoths from years past -- and that shorter treatments were increasingly popular. A June 2009 survey from the International Spa Association, the industry's trade group, reported that 86 percent of its member spas were offering more 30-minute options than the traditional 60- or 90-minute services. Hotels are also offering spa credits for hotel guests (giving a voucher for the spa when a room is booked, for example). And they are providing special promotions for local clientele, like letting them make a day of it by taking advantage of the spa's pool, sauna and relaxation area. Margaret Lora, spa director at Spa Merge, part of the West 57th Street by Hilton Club in New York, a timeshare and hotel in Manhattan, said that the shorter treatments were necessary for the spa's survival. 'The 30-minute treatment had almost disappeared from spa menus because it was really not very efficient for a spa to sell 30-minute treatments,' she said. 'In today's market, it's a way to touch a customer when the spas haven't been as busy.' 