^^"...I’m sure it’s falling on deaf ears."
Perhaps not on deaf ears, but Airbnb just didn't pull this out of a rabbit hat and chose to do something wild for the thrill of it. This is a few years late actually. See https://news.airbnb.com/airbnb-2022-summer-release-highlights/ .
In actuality, Airbnb today has a wider variety of places to stay in than anyone else in the world, but thus far they could only be found only by someone searching conventionally, by clicking price labels on a map of where they were intending to be. A case can be made that Airbnb has been the impetus for many of these out-of-the-norm places to be created in the first place, so why not take the initiative to find them easily?
What they have done now is nothing more then add a ribbon of iconized 'filters' at the top of the search/introductory page and now provide a shortcut to such places by categorizing them. It is an addition, not a replacement.
A common sentiment now appears to be that making the visitor aware of such places so easily surely steals viewing/bookings from others, and perhaps that Airbnb is getting away from its original form. Today Airbnb is a different business then 10 years ago and maybe, just maybe it can't afford to only support one type of host nor to limit the search function of their present-day vast host inventory using only one way.
The results for some hosts appears to be negative since their search views have dropped significantly, but it does beg the question was this before or after the start of this program. I have taken the time to read every Airbnb forum page (here, Airhost, Reddit, etc) and is not quite clear the timeline of the drop in views (and bookings) or is it due to a lot of other things going on which people may be forgetting.
Just in NA, it is a U.S. mid-term election year, there is a war going on, Wall Street (& 401Ks) plummeting, inflation is here, so is stagnation, battle of the education of the next generation of kids, crime, corruption of governmental institutions, remaining Covid-related issues, etc. I posted here weeks ago - get ready for a tough summer/Fall. It's here.
Yes, the glitches are not so funny, my place appears as an island but not in other 'water' categories, and subject to other weird outcomes, the views (and bookings) are abysmal, first time in 7 years we do have openings in the next 3 months (not like 3 years in the past). It will take them sometime to clean this up, what else is new.
Good luck to all in this new journey.