Lanes & Planes

Lanes & Planes GmbH, registered at Kap West in Munich under the Munich Commercial Register (HRB 235318), is a German travel management platform serving more than 1,700 companies.

It solves a problem most booking-only tools leave to finance: the trip, the supplier invoice and the accounting export arrive as a single record, with single-creditor consolidation across every travel payment rather than a separate receipt to chase down for each flight, hotel or train ticket. Rail is a particular strength — the platform handles Deutsche Bahn bookings and automates the associated electronic VAT refund claim, a specifically German requirement that is rarely built natively elsewhere in this category.

The product covers flights, trains, rental cars and hotels booked against what the vendor describes as the largest B2B travel inventory in the European market, backed by a 24/7 German-speaking, TÜV-certified support team for real-time help with delays and disruptions. Policy and approval workflows are configurable with role-based access, and CO2 is tracked per trip and per transport mode for sustainability reporting. A mobile app, Pocket Pilot, handles bookings and itinerary changes on the move.

Pricing is entirely quoted against travel volume and the add-on modules a company selects, with no fixed tiers published anywhere on the vendor's site; its own materials point to companies with annual travel spend from roughly €30,000 upward as the natural fit. For a German or DACH-based company whose travel runs heavily through domestic rail, the invoice-and-VAT-refund automation is a genuine efficiency gain that a generic international booking tool will not replicate.

What Lanes & Planes does well

• Invoice capture and single-creditor billing removes the receipt chase that follows every trip
• Automated Deutsche Bahn VAT refund claims, specific to German business travel
• 24/7 German-speaking, TÜV-certified support with real-time disruption handling
• CO2 tracking per trip and transport mode for sustainability reporting

Where Lanes & Planes falls short

• No published pricing anywhere — every quote requires a sales conversation
• Strongest for DACH-based, rail-heavy travel; air content is less competitive for long-haul-first companies
• Aimed at companies with meaningful travel volume (roughly €30k/year+), not a very small team

Standout feature. Automated Deutsche Bahn VAT refund claims bundled with the booking and the supplier invoice — a specifically German efficiency gain that generic international booking tools do not replicate.