Where Did Airbnb's Unique Stay Categories Go? (Treehouses, Cabins, Caves...)

If you're searching for something like "Airbnb unique stays gone" or "where did Airbnb categories go," you're not imagining things. A feature a lot of people loved is gone, and plenty of former regulars are still annoyed about it.

What the Categories Feature Was

For the last several years, Airbnb's homepage had a row of visual categories you could tap through to browse by property type — treehouses, cabins, A-frames, houseboats, glamping, the "OMG!" category of genuinely weird places. Hosts on the Airbnb Community forum describe it as genuinely good for discovery — guests would pick a destination based on what unusual place they could stay in, not the other way around. One host running a glamping site said it was directly responsible for bookings; a longtime guest described planning entire trips around what treehouses or "wow" homes were available nearby.

It wasn't a niche feature. It was one of the things that made Airbnb feel different from a generic hotel-booking site.

Where It Actually Went

In June 2025, Airbnb redesigned its homepage to put Experiences and Services front and center, and the category browsing bar was removed as part of that change. This isn't speculation — an Airbnb Community Manager confirmed it directly in the forums: the update was meant to make search feel more personalized, suggesting homes, experiences, and services based on each guest's habits instead of showing a manual row of categories to browse.

The reaction from guests and hosts was immediate and hasn't let up since. In the months that followed, people kept describing the same frustration: spending far longer scrolling for a cabin or treehouse than the old one-tap category used to take, feeling like the "personalized" suggestions were actually less relevant, and hosts with niche properties reporting fewer bookings because their listings had become harder to find. Airbnb's team pointed people to a feedback form and left the door open to reconsidering specific filters — but as of this writing, the category bar hasn't come back.

A Free Way to Browse by Category Again

That gap is exactly why we built Airbnb Gems — a free tool for browsing Airbnb-listed properties the way the old category bar let you: by treehouse, cabin, A-frame, and the other unique stay types that used to be one tap away.

It's not affiliated with Airbnb. You still book and message hosts directly on Airbnb — Airbnb Gems just solves the "I want to browse by unusual stay type" problem that the June 2025 redesign took away.