Thinder I find Colonia exotic but frankly apart for new Engineers, I haven't find much interest in the location, other players might find exploration of new systems interesting tough.
One benefit of Colonia for miner/traders is that things are closer to one another. The sell prices are not as high as in the bubble, but there are cases where you can buy commodities at one station and sell them at a huge profit to another station in the same system, or just one system away. Good mining sites were never more than 30LY from a station paying premium prices. Mining and trading are not exciting, but I find them relaxing, and I made a two and a half butt-tons of credits doing it the last time I was in Colonia.