Meet Annie Ojile, the Scooter Maven Behind Rome’s Best Vespa Tours

Issue #3

Photo courtesy of Annie Ojile

Romans know that the best way to get around this city is by scooter—there’s something thrilling about feeling the wind in your hair and seeing the monuments up close without a windshield. Plus, it’s the only way to avoid traffic jams and the eternal problem of parking. That said, I wouldn’t recommend trying to drive a scooter around Rome unless you’re very comfortable navigating big cities with a lot of traffic. That’s why Scooteroma is so brilliant—it gives you the experience of hopping on the back of a Vespa driven by a local who not only knows the traffic patterns but also regales you with tales while guiding you around the city.

From the very first Scooteroma tour I went on, I was hooked on them. Since then, I’ve done three other tours. The themes range from a classic tour to street art, cinema, and even a countryside tour in the Castelli Romani, the hill towns just outside of Rome. I always recommend Scooteroma’s tours to friends visiting from out of town because they’re so much fun and such a great way to get a deeper look at the city through the eyes of Roman Vespisti who are passionate about sharing their hometown. 

So for the first interview in this recurring series, I thought it would be a natural fit to chat with the undisputed queen of the Vespa vita, Annie Ojile, who grew up in Minnesota and moved to Rome 17 years ago, taught herself to drive a scooter, and founded Scooteroma. Annie manages a team of driver-guides and is a fantastic guide and conversationalist herself. 

Laura: Ciao Annie! 

Annie: Hello! Buongiorno!

Thank you so much for agreeing to be my first interviewee for my newsletter. This is really meaningful for me because I've been such a huge fan of Scooteroma and everything you do since we met five years ago now. 

Yeah, it was 2017. Well, thank you for being a fan because you have supported us through it all and I so appreciate it. 

I know that Scooteroma was born when your cousins came to visit and you took them around on a scooter. But actually I don’t think I know your coming to Rome story. How did you end up moving to Rome in the first place?

Well, my degree is in Italian and fashion, so my study abroad was in Milan and I have Italian heritage. So when I got to Italy, I was like “Oh my god, these are my people. Everyone talks loud, they use their hands, I fit right in.” The culture, the community, the Italians in general, I was like, “Okay, I'm home.” I just knew that I had to live in Italy. 

So I finished my study abroad, I went back to the States, I graduated, and then I moved right to New York because I was working in fashion. But I always knew I would move back to Italy and my dream back then was to work in fashion, for Giorgio Armani in Milan or Gucci in Florence because that’s when it was based in Florence. I had these big, big dreams of fashion in Italy. And then I was working in New York and this Italian dream was always burning inside of me. 

I eventually went back to Minnesota, where I started my second career in video and TV production. And I ended up loving working in this new job. The woman who hired me became my mentor, she’s still my mentor to this day. So I was there two and a half years before I moved to Italy, but I was like “I could get stuck in Minnesota. I could get a job that I don’t wanna leave, I could buy a house, I could meet a man.” Life could go a certain way where it would be very hard to leave and go to Italy, so I just said “It’s now or never.” So I turned 30 and then in September, two months later, I moved to Italy and I chose Rome. 

Why Rome?

I chose Rome not because it was my favorite. I chose it because I really thought it was the right choice to get a job. I thought I’ll work in Cinecittà, the Hollywood studios of Rome, but while I’m waiting for that to take off, I’ll work in tourism because I speak English—and Rome had both. So this was my plan. 

Also Rome is a big city and since I lived in New York for so long, I needed a big city. No place is like New York, but there are things about Rome that remind me of New York. It’s very neighborhood centric; every neighborhood is like a little community. It has more energy than the north. I just vibed with it that way, but I've never been a person that’s like, “Oh I’m so in love with Rome; it’s my dream to move to Rome.” My dream was to get myself to Italy and Rome was the path of least resistance. Typically I'm not like this; I'm like, “What’s my dream?” But my move to Rome was very calculated. 

And so in those early days pre-Scooteroma, what were you doing? You said you were working in tourism, so what was that like?

There’s a company called EF, it’s Education First, and they do really big groups of high school kids from America, Canada, and Britain. And so I was the tour director at the front of the 50-seater bus with a microphone. I started pursuing that right away because pursuing cinema or jump starting any big career takes time. It wasn’t my dream job, but a means to an end. I was 30 years old, I was very used to making a certain kind of salary and I knew I wasn’t gonna do that in Italy, but I had to make some money. 

And so is that when you learned to drive a scooter?

No, that next summer I started doing EF—that would’ve been 2006. And then when I wasn’t working in the summer, I had all these odd jobs. I worked at a restaurant, I worked at a boutique hair salon on Via Sistina. And then I worked at a wine bar. So I needed to get to the wine bar, Etablì. Etablì opened with just a couple waitresses and I was one of them. 

But the problem was getting home from work because, you know, public transportation isn’t ideal in Rome. So I bought a super busted up scooter, a Scarabeo, which is not Vespa, but especially back then was another Roman type scooter. So I was like, “Oh my god, I'm super cool. I have a super Roman scooter, it has one mirror. I’m gonna be Roman.”

Well, I had never driven one before. So I get this scooter and I have to drive to work on Friday during rush hour. So you know, ignorance is bliss. I got on this thing and I went to work. I was 45 minutes late! I walk in, I say to my boss, “I just drove a scooter for the first time. I nearly killed myself,” and he said, “Bene, così impari. Good, this way you learn. Go get changed.”

So that’s how I learned how to drive a scooter. I would drive it back and forth to work for months. I was scared to go fast, I was scared to wear my gloves, but I was determined to learn how to drive that scooter and I was so happy because I was working, I was earning money, I was getting around on my own. I was learning how to be a Roman. 

And that is when my cousins called—my female cousins from California. They called me and said, “When we come to Rome, we wanna rent scooters and drive around.” So I found a scooter rental place, I arranged everything, and we kind of set off on this impromptu tour. I was leading the “tour” ‘because I worked in tourism so I knew all this stuff about Rome. And at the beginning of the tour, one of the girls said, “You should do this for a business.” I was like, “Oh, that’s a good idea.” So I led this tour, no one got in an accident—because they didn’t know how to drive—but once again ignorance is bliss. And what’s crazy about this story is that where I rented those scooters, when our clients drive, that’s where we get the scooters from. It just ended up being very serendipitous. 

So when you launched Scooteroma, who were the first Vespisti?

Well, launching is a big word. What happened is one of my cousins worked for Warner Brothers and she told her coworker, who was a sales manager for all these people across the States. This coworker came to Rome and I led a tour for her and her friends and she went back to the States and she told all these people that she managed. So I would get an email from Ohio, one from Florida, one from here or there, and it was really because of this woman. And then all these people started telling their friends. I started a blog. You know me, I’m not a blogger, but this was so long ago. I mean this was 2007, before social media, before anything. So I started writing this blog and that’s when I got the name Scooteroma. Because I had a scooter, I didn’t have a Vespa. 

The name is so brilliant though because it’s so simple and you know exactly what it’s about. 

Well, because I had a scooter. If I had had a Vespa, who knows what the name would be! I did upgrade from the Scarabeo eventually and I got this little tiny blue Piaggio scooter, but my clients were renting Vespas and driving Vespas. 

And so at this point, it was just you running all the tours?

Yes, I didn’t have the squad. 

When did that part come into play?

Scooteroma was like a side hustle, which now is the star. So once in a while I would have a driver do a tour with me and we’d have the clients as passengers and I thought this is really the way to go. So between 2007 and 2009, I was getting the Vespas from a different rental company and at that company, I met Valerio, my squad boss. He was working there and he was also a guide. One day he sent me an email, he said, “I've left so and so, now I’m a freelancer and I can be a Vespa guide for you.” And that’s when everything changed. And also in this period, I met Giovanni.

I was just going to ask you about that... 

Yeah, I met G. He didn't have anything to do with Vespas, he was a concierge at Hotel de Russie, as you know. And I met him because I went to the hotel to pick clients up for a tour. One concierge called me and said, “Can you get here in two hours to lead a tour?” So I went, and the same scooter company that I scootered with my cousins, they’re the ones that brought the Vespa to the hotel. It was all very serendipitous. My whole story is very serendipitous. 

How many guides do you have in the squad now? 

I have to do another count, but it’s like 18.

So it’s grown since just a few months ago.

We got four new drivers this summer. And we fought tooth and nail. It was like getting blood out of a rock because it was so hard to find them and we had to train them, but we got four this summer. 

It’s just amazing to think about the growth from those early days.

Oh well, I’ll tell you at the end of the 2021 season, we have scootered with 10,000 clients and two of those seasons were during Covid. In 2020, we didn’t scooter—I mean maybe 70 people. And then 2021 we only had three months. So nonostante Covid, we had 10,000 clients. 

10,000 is a huge milestone.

10,000 over ten years.

And the squad is so amazing. In photos it’s so striking to see you with your American flag helmet and your red lipstick, the only woman among all of these guys. You look like the ultimate girlboss! What is the dynamic like between you and the guys?

It’s interesting, for me it’s normal ‘cause I’m American. Your boss can be female, male, straight, gay, whatever. In America I think there’s more flexibility. And you know, Giovanni said to me once, “This is a Mediterranean male dominated world and you are a female boss,” and I swear to god I had never thought about this ever. And he said this to me in 2017. It had never even crossed my mind, but I must say that since then I’ve been more conscious of it. 

I think for me it’s been finding the balance between being their friend and slightly putting the fear of god in them, but being their leader. And you can be a leader when you’re a friend, but there is a balance between friend and leader. We laugh, we have so much fun. With some of them there's more of a brotherly vibe and others I’ve literally seen grow up in front of my eyes. They started when they were 22, now they’re 32 and they’ve also grown within the squad. They were drivers, now they’re tour leaders. I’m very proud of the boys. In that way I’m very motherly to them. So it’s a balance. 

I wanted to also talk to you a little bit about the records because we touched upon this already, but I recently saw something you posted that Scooteroma broke a record with ten tours in one day.

Yeah, because before Covid we would do like six to eight a day. And my dream was always to do eight a day if we have the squad. Now we do a lot of days of eight. So that goal is hit, but then this week we had 10 tours and I just never thought we could get that big.

It’s crazy especially because I remember meeting up with you in Piazza Navona right after the first lockdown and you were telling me that practically overnight everything just canceled. And to go from that to breaking all the records is kind of crazy.

Obviously, all the people that would’ve come in those two years said, “Okay, let’s go to Italy.” And I think next year will be a very good year too. 

Rome is definitely back now, right?

Oh, 100%. For us, like any hospitality business, it was about having the staff. Bars, restaurants, you know. And the same thing happened here in Rome, so getting these new drivers was a miracle. I mean, we were literally stopping people on the street when we saw them driving Vespas. I’m so grateful for those guys. It was a massive group effort because we didn’t have enough squad. You know, the guys do two or three tours a day. 

Which is a lot because they last like three hours, right? 

Yeah, three or four hours. The squad is really amazing. But as you know in tourism, we work from Easter to November. It’s not a very balanced life. Winter is lower, shoulder season. But we’ll see what’s gonna happen this year. I think in November we’re gonna have a strong month and I think we’ll have a surge of people over Christmas because Rome has the Vatican. 

Another thing I’m curious about because I’ve obviously done several of the tours—the street art tour, the cinema tour, the double street tour, and the countryside tour—so I’m curious, who actually designs the tours and comes up with the itineraries?

The classic tour I would never be so obnoxious as to be like, “I created that” because Rome is classic and ancient. I had ideas, Valerio had ideas, the classic tour was kind of born naturally. 

The street art tour I created in 2015, during a time when street art was just coming on the scene. I was taking a photography class and one of our assignments was to go photograph street art and I loved it. And I thought, “If I love it, my clients are gonna love it.” That's always my barometer. If we like it, they’re gonna like it. So I said we’re gonna do this street art tour and I picked the neighborhoods that I had photographed. And this was a long time ago, so the street art scene was very neighborhood specific. And I went to Michele and I said, “You’re gonna be good at this.” So in the beginning we led every single street art tour and then I started teaching the other guys and now they’re all street art experts. 

Food once again kind of happened naturally ‘cause we always stopped during the tour to have a coffee or gelato and Jacopo is a huge foodie and he wrote foodie books. So I think a lot of times in businesses, ideas happen because of demand or organically and that’s the best way because then you’re getting feedback right away from your clients. I create the branding, so I’m in charge of the tours, but there’s always feedback from the guys. 

So it’s kind of a collaborative process?

It is collaborative. I get this idea and then I work with the guys on it. And now since we’re doing so many tours and there are so many repeat clients, we’re gonna do a second version of the classic tour to go to other places that would be considered classic, but different from the original one. So we’ll have the OG classic tour and then we’ll have a different iteration. We’re also revamping our street art tour. 

Well street art is ephemeral by nature, right? So it kind of has to evolve. 

I always say it has an expiration date. Quadraro, where we took you, is so changed now. Back then we did Quadraro, Pigneto, Ostiense, but Quadraro isn’t the place to go now. It’s not as relevant as it was before. The street art tour is gonna be Garbatella, which is booming with massive murals, different parts of Ostiense, and we’re gonna do a different coffee stop. So we’ll have that and we’ll have double street, and then we’ll have a new classic one. 

We also stopped in Testaccio at the old slaughterhouse, which has been completely renovated.

Yes, no one goes there. We love that spot. That’s part of our double street tour. Double street is always San Lorenzo, Testaccio, and if it’s four hours, also Ostiense and Gianciolo. Because San Lorenzo takes so much time, there’s a lot there. That’s a big chunk of the tour. But I can't tell you how many double streets we’ve sold. I launched it in February 2020 and then everything fell apart. People want new things, they wanna get outside the center and discover something new. I always say getting under the skin of the city. Street art is a catalyst to explore the city—the history, the culture. 

That's one of the things I think is so great about the tours. They bring you to places you wouldn’t normally visit. Like even on the cinema tour, Michele drove me all the way out to the Parco degli Acquedotti.

Yes, absolutely. La Dolce Vita and then La Grande Bellezza. And yeah, it’s a little bit of a hike on the bike—20 minutes, half an hour—but just imagine going with mezzi pubblici, you’d never get there.

Exactly. That park is such a gem. Now that I live here, I love it, but as a tourist I don’t think you would normally see it because it is a little bit farther off the beaten path. 

Absolutely, it’s tough to get there. The guys and I always say we have the best job—il lavoro più bello del mondo. We get paid to drive a Vespa around Rome with amazing clients. I love my job. It’s the best.

This is part one of a two-part interview. It has been edited for length and clarity. In the second part, Annie and I discuss some of her favorite places in Italy outside of Rome, including Ischia and Napoli. Subscribe below to receive part 2 in your inbox next week!

Further Reading

• I wrote about Scooteroma for Nuvo in this piece about revisiting the classic freedom of Vespa riding in Rome.

• The cinema lover’s guide to Rome that I wrote for AFAR includes some of the places I visited on Scooteroma’s cinema tour.

• Fellow Rome-based journalist Seth Doane featured Annie and Scooteroma in this video segment for CBS Sunday Morning News.