In August 2017, she did a TEDxUQ talk on her sustainable tourism research. Dolnicar also researches public perceptions and acceptance of water conservation and water from alternative sources such as recycled water, including media inaccuracy and bias. She has also studied attracting high-quality foster carers, and researched how to restore tourism to areas hit by disasters, by identifying "resilient travellers". She has studied attendance of lectures by undergraduate students. Since 2018 she is Co-Editor-in-Chief of the journals "Annals of Tourism Research". Her h-index is 53. Dolnicar is an elected fellow of three societies for tourism researchers, the International Academy for the Study of Tourism in 2013, the International Association of Scientific Experts in Tourism (AIEST), and the Council for Australasian Tourism and Hospitality Education (CAUTHE). She has won a number of awards, including the Charles R. Goeldner Article of Excellence Award for the best paper published in the preceding year in the Journal of Travel Research (in 2004 and 2016), the UQ Excellence in Research Supervision award (2017), the Travel and Tourism Research Association's Distinguished Researcher Award recognizing Dolnicar as a valuable resource in the tourism research community (2017), the Association of Children's Welfare Agencies (ACWA) Service Partnership Award and the University of Wollongong Research Excellence Award for Senior Researcher. Dolnicar received the Ambassador of Science Award of the Republic of Slovenia at an award ceremony held on November 21, 2016 in the country's capital and Dolnicar's birthplace, Ljubljana. The Ambassador of Science award is the highest national prize the Republic of Slovenia awards to expatriate native Slovenian researchers in recognition of their global research excellence, the high impact of their work as well as their active engagement in international knowledge transfer. The US-based Travel and Tourism Research Association (TTRA) awarded her the Distinguished Researcher Award (2017) for ground-breaking research that positively impacts the tourism industry, and outstanding service to the tourism research community. In the Association's 48-year history this award has been given to only four people. Dolničar was born in Ljubljana, Slovenia, grew up in Vienna, Austria, and moved to Australia in 2002. She is married and has two children.