Members of the travel industry can be remarkable for their optimism. But then they are not in coal mining. The sector has grown pretty-well continuously for decades.
Even those parts regularly consigned to the historical bin bag by commentators refuse to be taken away. Travel agents are used to hearing they are finished, but there are more on the high street now than in the early 1980s.
Yet there are times when optimism shades into whistling in the dark. Give me a pound for every time I have heard someone express concern about "talking the industry down" and I would be up there with Peter Long.
So a survey of the optimism among small and medium-sized companies makes interesting reading. The Entrepreneurs' Index compiled on behalf of Bowmark, a private-equity firm, aims to track how positive directors of companies in various sectors feel about their businesses.
It finds the confidence of travel company heads in their own business has fallen 10 percentage points in the last six months and confidence in the future of the sector as a whole has fallen by 16 points.
That leaves 62% of travel company directors still positive about their own business and 47% positive about the industry. But as Bowmark managing partner Charles Ind points out: "These are entrepreneurial firms and they tend to be bullish." The results are worse then expected, he says.
The contrast with other sectors - business services, manufacturing, healthcare and publishing and media - is revealing.
Travel and leisure has the lowest optimism ratings and only publishing and media suffered a greater fall in confidence over the past half year. The media is taking a hiding from cuts in advertising, but companies in the sector still appear more optimistic than those in travel. Remarkably, the survey suggests 42% of media firms expect revenue to grow by 20% or more over the next year. A mere 17% of travel companies expect similar growth.
A few words of caution - first, I do not have the full results of the survey, just six pages of highlights, so it is difficult to judge the findings. However, let us assume a private-equity company knows how to assess business confidence.
Second, the survey sample is small - involving only 163 small and medium-sized companies - of which 30 are travel and leisure firms.
Third, bracketing travel and leisure together is normal in the City, but is not entirely helpful here. The leisure sector includes hotel groups, which form part of the travel industry, and restaurants, bars and casinos which generally do not.
That said, at least two other findings are telling. Four out of five of the travel and leisure companies surveyed believe government intervention is damaging their business - up from 68% six months ago. The same four out of five say taxes are a burden, almost double the percentage last time out. In other sectors, government legislation is a problem to 70% and taxes an obstacle to two-thirds.
Is travel more heavily taxed than other sectors? It has not been subject to tax increases above those on other industries in the past six months - unless a higher proportion of travel directors are non-domiciles in the UK or were planning to cash in on the previous rate of Capital Gains Tax.
Could the explanation be that travel companies are hurting more than average and increasingly resentful of costs they cannot avoid or control?
A second point of note is that two-thirds of travel and leisure companies complain of a skills shortage - up from 45% six months ago.
Can there truly have been such a decline in skills in six months, or are the demands of a rapidly changing situation exposing the limitations of a workforce - and managers - schooled in ways of operating that fit an expanding industry? I'm only asking.