In the early 2000s, PCC reclaimed control of its transportation—and its guest experience. After decades of Waikīkī tour operators consolidating ticket sales, dictating schedules, and siphoning retail and dining, President & CEO Alfred Grace and strategist J. Alan Walker led a 2002 reset: no more consolidation, direct sales incentives, and PCC-managed charters and dispatch. Buses arrived earlier, NPS rose, margins improved, and partnerships professionalized (eventually with Roberts Hawai‘i and camera-based quality scoring). The shift remains a strategic victory for PCC.

In 2024, BYU–Hawaii alumnus Mark Ellis became the Polynesian Cultural Center’s first director of voyaging experiences, leading the Iosepa on its first open-ocean journey in eight years. The 57-foot double-hulled canoe joined 26 traditional vessels at FestPAC in Kualoa, then circumnavigated O‘ahu before returning to Lā‘ie. Ellis, inspired as a boy by the Hōkūle‘a’s historic voyages, continues the renaissance of Pacific wayfinding traditions, strengthening Hawaiian identity and honoring ancestral knowledge preserved through generations of navigators.