"From the moment we start walking we have so much head space and mental energy available to say, 'How can we help,' because we have seemingly so much time available to be nice to people," says Purvis, who is chuffed with the feedback from the welcome at Napier airport during the ICC World Cup.
"It's not that it's good, bad or ugly but that's just the way it is."
Purvis emphasises he isn't in any way suggesting Europeans aren't cordial but on the surface there's a defence mechanism.
"It is difficult at times because there are 50 other people wanting the same service."
Not long after leaving Hawke's Bay in his late teens, he started working at a five-star hotel in the Melbourne CBD, which spawned his interest in events management.
Monash University beckoned but he graduated with a sports management degree at a "young" Griffith University on the Gold Coast.
At Griffith he helped establish programmes leading to the University Games before rejoicing in the impending success at "the best university per capita in Australia".
From there he went to alcohol marketing giants Diageo Australia in Sydney for 15 months before the Olympics arrived in 2000.
"When Olympics come to town it doesn't happen often and certainly not to New Zealand because it's too small so I asked for a sabbatical and they said yes."
His role included workforce accreditation, making him responsible for 26 sport stadiums as well as three non-sport venues.
Incidentally that's when he first met his prospective French wife who returned home after the Olympics to work for Host Broadcasting Services (HBS) in Paris.
Purvis' client at the Games was the Australian Government and the person in charge was junior MP Tony Abbott.
"It's quite interesting to see where he's got to now so I had to laugh," he says of the now Australian Prime Minister.
Constantly making incremental gains in promoting events remains part of his "personal architecture".
"You rock up to an event four years later and you see the same old thing. It's a case of who you know, not what you know."
He enjoyed brand management with Diageo for the next 15 months but a request for another period of time off went down like a lead balloon so he quit.
Then HBS offered him a broadcasting role with the 2002 Fifa World Cup in South Korea/Japan.
"The broadcaster side of things involves 90 per cent of people who have done it before, are technically skilled and reasonably nice people.
"If they are not nice people - and that happens unfortunately more and more - they are technical geniuses."
On the local organising committees, five have done it before, "typically a bit younger, absolutely capable and competent in performing their defined roles but are learning on the job in terms of what that means in a big event so there's a little bit of energy wasted".
His resume includes the European Football Championship, Uefa, Commonwealth Games, Rugby World Cup, athletics champs and World Equestrian Games.
