I don't think many people consider tail calls more intuitive than a while loop. The opposite is more obvious.
This depends a lot on the background of the respective person. For someone who is more trained in classical mathematics, tail calls are more intuitive (or rather: nearer to their knowledge base) than while loops.
I'm absolutely sure the people who think tail recursion is any way similar, in complexity, to a while loop have never attempted to teach someone how to program.
The explanation is just as simple translatable, even saving one the words like "while" or "until".
"Do this action 10 times" "Put one item in each box"
I fail to see how recursion is /more/ intuitive, in pretty much every (english) language construct I can think of the condition is separate from the action.