Twelve million olive trees have protected Lesvos from mass tourism. During the "dark" 60s and 70s, olive oil production kept the population on the island. The population of about ninety thousand inhabitants had no reason to transform their houses into "rooms to let". The low development of Lesvos is now the big advantage of the island. No big hotels, no artificial settlements overcrowded in summer and empty in the winter. Lesvos offers instead real Greek villages inhabited by locals.