Math has problems where everyone suspects the proof will open doors and give valuable insight- I'm mostly plugged into topology where there are a lot of those. There are also problems that aren't interesting except in their difficulty, which drives the creation of new techniques and tools- Fermat's Last Theorem isn't particularly useful, but the effort to prove it created a vast body of spinoff work. But you also see problems that are more passive, waiting for someone to approach them with new firepower. Tilings are more like that- a testing ground for new techniques, and a way for mathematicians to keep their wits sharp.

Also, they do have some inherent beauty. I mean an aperiodic tiling is crazy right? And with one tile?