The hotel at the centre of Tenerife's coronavirus scare has lifted restrictions on guests, allowing them to leave their rooms to sit by the pool and eat in the restaurant, one holidaymaker told Reuters.

More than 700 guests have spent a second day in lockdown at the four-star hotel on the Spanish island of Tenerife after four cases of coronavirus were detected there among a group of Italians.

One guest who is on holiday with her two young sons and elderly in-laws described the situation as "absolutely awful."

45-year-old Lara Pennington from Manchester told Reuters by phone that the family planned to stay in their rooms, even though authorities relaxed the rules on Wednesday, letting people displaying no symptom of illness go to the pool and other common areas.

"It's very scary because everyone is out, in the pool, spreading the virus - I won't go down to the restaurant and had to ring down and ask them to bring us food up to the room now that the restaurant has re-opened," Pennington said.

Another visitor told Reuters they had not been informed that the lockdown would last two weeks.

"We receive information by telephone or through staff knocking on our door, but we have no idea how long we are going to stay here," said Heidi, from Germany. "The hotel is really nice. We like it, but we really didn't have luck with all this."

The coronavirus can spread via droplets in the air when an infected person coughs, sneezes or breathes out, and these can also contaminate surfaces such as door handles and railings.

"Asymptomatic hotel guests can have a normal life inside the hotel, with the required prevention measures, while the guests with symptoms will remain isolated in their rooms," regional government official Maria Teresa Cruz Oval said.

Stephen Griffin, an expert on infection and immunity at Britain's University of Leeds, said the best advice for guests was to minimise contact with one another and to remain in their rooms as much as possible.