Originally Posted by Giles
My travel is infrequent because I wasnt actively pursuing FF rewards. So if it meant flying more frequently to obtain / maintain some sort of reward status then I would. Or is my "goal" travel not frequent enough to warrant MR's? (ie- the expense of the runs would outweigh the expense of paying for the cost of the goal trip)
People do MRs and accumulate miles/points for various reasons. Some do year-end MRs so that they have enough miles/points to obtain or retain elite status - status that they want in order to make upgrading easier, or have lounge access (on overseas flights) or to be able to select exit row seats in these days of diminished creature comforts in coach, etc.
Others do MRs when the cost of the mileage accrued in the run is less than the equivalent value of the miles when spent on award travel. A classic example of this would be someone with 75,000 miles in his/her account going on a marathon MR or series of MRs in order to get to 90,000 miles - good for a business class trip to Europe, say. The cost to accumulate those miles might be between one and two cents per mile. When exchanged for a round trip in business to, say Paris, with a published fare of, say, $5000, the value of those miles is way, way higher than a penny or two each. Read the trip reports posted by
Seat 2A on the "Trip Report" board to see both how he accumulates miles through structured insanity, in order to spend them on fabulous first class vacations around the world. In his case he gets an excellent return on the MR investment. Others would go bananas traveling as much as he does to get the rewards. Different strokes.
If you love leisure flying and traveling, then spending the money and time to accumulate miles and/or status is a way to indulge your tastes without real suffering. If you travel for work, status and mileage is something that is important to you to prevent discomfort as you go. Different motives, same means.