I don't think it is useless. It is pretty common to use relative rather than absolute numbers: population density rather than population, GDP per capita rather

I don't think it is useless. It is pretty common to use relative rather than absolute numbers: population density rather than population, GDP per capita rather than just GDP... When it comes to GDP, GDP per capita says more about how affluent a country is compared to other countries than just the GDP. And in the same way that a larger contry tends to have a larger economy, a country that is larger in size and in population is more likely to have more visitors than the same country with less size and less population. Besides: things like history is likely to be what is often used to explain the large amounts of tourists that coutnries like France gets, in the first place, while the population variable is left hidden.